Avsnitt
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Trump is once again trying to reassert himself as the law and order president. During his recent joint address to Congress, the president called for a mandatory death penalty for anyone who kills a police officer. This of course comes less than two months after Trump himself pardoned more than 1,500 Jan. 6 rioters, including over 300 who pleaded guilty to either assaulting or obstructing law enforcement.
One of those law enforcement officers who was assaulted on Jan. 6 was former Capitol Police Sergeant Aquilino Gonell, who tells Mehdi that he “had to laugh” last week when Trump tried to claim he’s on the side of law enforcement. Sgt. Gonell tells Mehdi that he was assaulted by more than 40 rioters that day and had to undergo two surgeries as a result. When asked what his reaction was when Trump pardoned those rioters on his first day back in office, Gonell told Mehdi it was like a “stab in the heart.”
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Elon Musk gets called a lot of names by a lot of people, but not many elected officials find the courage to call him a “dick” without fear of the DOGE bros coming for them, unless you’re Senator Tina Smith that is, the Democrat from Minnesota who sat down for a wide-ranging interview with Mehdi in her office on Capitol Hill.
The senator’s harsh words are not exclusively reserved for Musk and Trump though, as the Minnesota senator is just as unfiltered in her criticisms of the Democratic Party to which she belongs, a party that she describes today as being “too cautious.”
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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In this week’s episode of Mehdi Unfiltered, Mehdi is joined by Democratic Rep. Jim Himes to discuss his censure vote for Rep. Al Green, the detainment of Mahmoud Khalil, and the ‘pro-fascist instincts’ of Elon Musk.
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The conservative moment in the US has even taken to declaring liberal Jewish critics of Israel as not Jewish enough, says one leading Jewish expert on antisemitism, who warns against the conflating of antisemitism with anti-Zionism.
Friedman has not been shy to point out the hypocrisy displayed by people who are outraged by phrases like “from the river to the sea,” but are seemingly unbothered by Nazi-looking salutes on stage here in the US.
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In Part Two of Mehdi’s interview with Joe Walsh, the former Republican congressman turned Never-Trumper, Mehdi challenges Walsh on his support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
Mehdi presses Walsh on his use of the term “genocide” to describe Russia’s attack on Ukraine but his refusal to apply it to Israel’s attack on Gaza; on his smearing of the International Criminal Court for having “anti-israel bias”; and on his refusal to condemn Israel’s mass displacement of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, not just Gaza.
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Former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh was once a proud ally of the right-wing Tea Party – the movement that many believe paved the way for Donald Trump. But today, Walsh is no fan of Trump. In fact, he’s become one of the most vocal ‘Never Trump’ Republicans and is now officially an independent.
In this first of a two-part interview, Mehdi and the former Congressman discuss the fallout from Trump term two so far, the Democrats' failure to fully push back against him, and whether the US is heading towards civil war.
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New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ days seem to be numbered as he faces mounting pressure – from New Yorkers and beyond – to resign. The embattled mayor had faced charges related to bribery, campaign finance violations, and conspiracy offenses - until that is, the Trump DOJ stopped the charges against Adams just two months before his trial, in return for the mayor’s support for the administration’s immigration policies.
Adams has denied the charges and stated that he will serve his full term, despite the national outrage, but one man is ready to step up if needed: New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams – the first in line to succeed Adams and become acting mayor.
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Award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad has just released his first non-fiction book titled One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. The book’s title, inspired by a viral tweet Akkad posted in October of 2023, gives you a good hint that the main theme is the genocide in Gaza. Akkad joins ‘Mehdi Unfiltered’ to discuss the many themes in his book, what inspired it, and why so many are silent when they shouldn’t be.
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Indian Author Pankaj Mishra has spent much of the past year advocating against Israel’s war on Gaza, and has now even gone as far as to write a whole book on the subject – The World After Gaza: A History. The book is of course inspired by Mishra’s London Review essay and lecture, ‘The Shoah After Gaza’ – which drew up controversy last year, after the Barbican backed out of hosting Mishra’s lecture, all before he even gave it.
Hear Mishra discuss the implications of Israel’s impunity, US President Donald Trump’s re-election, and his spats with far-right writers Jordan Peterson and Niall Ferguson, as well as parallels between the state of Israel and his home country of India, specifically in relation to what India is doing in Kashmir.
Click here to buy a copy of Mishra’s book, ‘The World After Gaza: A History.’
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Donald Trump hasn’t even been in office for a month, and already, his administration is dismantling key agencies of the federal government, including USAID. Much of this work is being done by shadow president Elon Musk, whose so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been wreaking havoc on key systems at the Treasury, the Department of Education, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. If DOGE really plans on cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget, there’s one place progressives say he can start: the Pentagon’s whopping $850 billion budget.
Ben Cohen, progressive activist and co-founder of the ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s and Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist who served in Trump’s first-term State Department join Mehdi to discuss.
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Last week, Democratic Congresswoman and ‘Squad’ member Ilhan Omar became Elon Musk’s latest target on Twitter, after he falsely accused her of breaking the law for sharing legal advice to undocumented immigrants.
In this interview on ‘Mehdi Unfiltered,’ Rep. Omar sits down with Mehdi to discuss Musk’s attack on her, the ongoing effort to dismantle federal agencies funded by Congress, the need for the Democratic Party to get more aggressive and use the leverage it has and Trump’s plan for the US to illegally take control of Gaza among other topics.
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Last week, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order freezing US aid to South Africa, saying that their new land ownership law – meant to address the legacy of apartheid – “blatantly discriminates against ethnic minority Afrikaners.” This came just days after Elon Musk railed against the law on Twitter, calling it “openly racist.”
In this interview, South Africa’s Ambassador to the US Ebrahim Rasool sits down with Mehdi to discuss the new law, Trump and Musk’s decision to “interfere” with South Africa’s internal politics, and the country’s ICJ case against Israel, which the Trump administration cited as one of the reasons for freezing aid to South Africa.
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Do you ever wonder where the world will be in 50 years?
This is the key question that award-winning filmmaker Asif Kapadia – best known for his films ‘Diego Maradona’, ‘Amy’ and ‘Senna’ – seeks to answer in his newest work, ‘2073.’ And the answer is a lot scarier than perhaps the flying cars we imagined for the future.
‘2073’ gives us a look at just one of the possibilities if the world continues to devolve at its current pace. A world almost unrecognizable as citizens of ‘New San Francisco’ face the fall of democracy and the harrowing effects of climate change. (Be sure to watch the exclusive clip from the film at the end of the interview above.)
“I thought the whole world feels really dystopian – everything that happens every day that I read, everything I see happening around me – and I thought, how do I express this feeling, this fear about where we're heading?” Kapadia tells Mehdi.
He continues, “My main aim with this film was to kind of almost have a God's eye view of the whole world. Because my background is from India, I've worked in Brazil, I've worked in Europe, I live in the UK, I've worked in the US. I just saw the same kind of elements, the same playbook happening everywhere.”
Thus, ‘2073’ depicts the confluence of climate change and the rise of authoritarianism in the dystopian city of New San Francisco, where there’s no privacy, no freedom, no democracy. The film is a warning of what is to come if we let oligarchs go unchecked.
But it’s not all doom and gloom, because as much as ‘2073’ serves as a warning, it also is a call to action.
“The film is there to create a dialogue for us to be talking now, for you, for me, for everyone to be saying, what can we individually do? I don't think it's as simple as putting a neat little moment at the end of the film and saying, if you do this, everything will be great. I mean, the struggle is much more complex and the fight for freedom and democracy is much more layered than me just saying go out and vote. There's something else going on here and we're going to have to talk about it,” Kapadia explains.
He concludes, “I think partly it starts at home. It starts with you, starts with your kids, it starts with your family, your parents, your aunties and uncles, but then also a kind of wider community about what are we going to do to protect ourselves from what is happening. We're not crazy. This stuff is happening. And I think the film, part of the process of showing it, has been almost therapy for people.”
Watch the full interview above to hear what Kapadia’s take is on the mainstream media’s coverage of the issues he highlights in ‘2073’, and the exclusive clip, only for Zeteo paid subscribers
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Award-winning British journalist and broadcaster Rachel Shabi recently sat down with Mehdi for a wide-ranging interview about her new book Off-White: The Truth About Antisemitism, the conditionality of whiteness for Jewish people, and why progressives need to establish their own trustworthiness when speaking out against antisemitism.
Click here to buy a copy of Shabi’s book, Off-White:The Truth About Antisemitism.
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It’s been a historic week in the United States as a man who was twice impeached, convicted on 34 felony counts, and incited an insurrection has now returned to the White House as Commander-in-Chief for the second time. Who better to help us make sense of this unprecedented time and give it context than Heather Cox Richardson?
Richardson is a prolific Substack writer. Her newsletter Letters From An American has accumulated almost two million followers. Named one of USA Today’s Women of the Year, Richardson is also a professor of 19th-century American history at Boston College, and even interviewed Joe Biden in the White House. Richardson sits down with Mehdi to discuss Trump’s second presidency, the parallels with McKinley, and whether there has ever been someone like Elon Musk in US history.
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Between controversial salutes, inflammatory statements, and billionaires pretending to be normal people, there’s a lot to take in from Donald Trump’s inauguration. The newly re-elected president tore up Joe Biden’s legacy with one executive order after another as a crowd of mostly rich and very rich people looked on.
“I think it's clear that a handful of billionaires are in charge, and Musk certainly has the most influence,” says Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, who joins Mehdi to share his perspective.
“What you're seeing being constructed is essentially a kleptocracy in which the billionaires of this country are going to steal from the poor and the middle class.”
One of those billionaires, Elon Musk, spent day one of the second Trump era performing two Nazi-looking salutes on stage in DC. Despite his supporters denying it was a “Heil Hitler,” Murphy is not convinced.
“Maybe you could excuse that gesture if it wasn't coming from somebody who has a consistent history of identifying themselves with neo-Nazis and with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. He literally amplifies some of the most vicious anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on Twitter.”
Mehdi pushed Murphy on his support for Israel since October 7, on the TikTok ban that Democrats voted for, and the increase in billionaire wealth on Joe Biden’s watch.
And, looking forward, Mehdi asked the senator about the future of a deeply unpopular Democratic Party.
“If we want to win,” says Murphy, who is considered to be a possible 2028 Democratic presidential contender, “you have got to make economic populism and economic fairness the tent pole of your party, and you've got to build a bigger tent in which you have the courage…to bring in some people to that tent that might not line up with you on all the issues that I think are important.”
If you are a paid subscriber, you can watch the full interview above to hear Mehdi question Murphy on sending weapons to Israel, Kamala Harris’ campaign, bipartisanship, and the normalization of corruption.
Free subscribers can watch a 15-minute preview. Do consider becoming a paid subscriber today to watch the full interview and let us know in the comments below who you would like to see on ‘Mehdi Unfiltered’ next!
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Who is Marwan Barghouti? Why is he nicknamed “Palestine’s Mandela”? And why does Israel see him as such a big threat, even behind bars, that it is adamantly refusing to release him as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal?
This week on Mehdi Unfiltered, Mehdi goes on a deep dive into Barghouti’s life, his activism, and most importantly, all the red flags around his trial and imprisonment by Israel.
Barghouti’s story, like that of most Palestinians, is a mix of struggle and hope. The former Fatah official, the political party currently led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, is the most popular leader among Palestinians today. And while 89-year-old Abbas sets a low bar for competition, Mehdi explains what makes Barghouti still so popular after decades of imprisonment - and such a threat to both Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas.
It is rare for any Palestinian to see an inkling of justice in Israel’s military courts. Red flag after red flag, Mehdi details everything that went wrong in Barghouti’s trial, from torture to international law violations to a judge with a grudge, because there is no statute of limitations on injustice, especially when its victims continue to pay the price for it.
“My father used to always tell me that hope is sometimes a privilege, and being hopeless is a privilege that we can't have as Palestinians.”
Also, Marwan Barghouti’s son, Arab Barghouthi, joins Mehdi to discuss the latest on his father’s condition, his health after decades behind bars, and whether prison changed him from the leader he was.
“I don't think so,” Arab refutes, “I have my trust in God first and in my father, because he is someone who has been through a lot in his life.” Despite his hope, Arab is also well aware of his father’s difficult conditions in prison, especially since the October 7 attack.
“The head of Ofer prison came to him and in front of other prisoners, he asked him to put his hands behind his back and to kneel, to try to tell the other prisoners that if I can humiliate your leader, I can humiliate you all, which he refused. So they forced him to do it, which got his shoulder dislocated,” Arab recounts, adding that many more torture techniques were used against his father including solitary confinement and sleep deprivation.
Watch the full interview above to find out why Marwan Barghouti’s case should have never reached Israeli courts, and if Arab believes Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would actually support his father’s release in 2025.
If you liked this episode of Mehdi Unfiltered, do consider becoming a paid subscriber today and let us know who you’d like to see on our show next!
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Have you ever been stuck with a subscription you just can’t seem to cancel? Or how about buying tickets online that nearly double in price at checkout? (Yes, we’re looking at you, Ticketmaster.)
We’ve all been there. But thanks to the work of the current Federal Trade Commission (FTC), those days will soon be coming to an end with initiatives like “click to cancel” and policies cracking down on pesky “junk fees.”
As the final days of the Biden Administration come to an end, outgoing FTC Chair Lina Khan reflects on some of the agency’s biggest accomplishments and the legacy she will be leaving behind. “I think our record speaks for itself. I think all of the ways that we are delivering enormous benefits for the American people speaks for itself, and I'm just enormously proud of the just win after win that we've been able to deliver for the American people,” she tells Mehdi.
Khan, who was just 32 when she was appointed to her post in 2021, has been able to unite Americans across political lines for the FTC’s anti-monopoly work and has produced populist policies that the Biden administration can be proud of.
As she explains to Mehdi, “One of the original insights underlying the antitrust laws and the anti-monopoly tradition in America was a recognition that deep concentrations of economic power would be dangerous for the American people. It would undermine their economic freedoms, but it could also pose political dangers.”
And as Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg cozy up to Trump, Khan warns, “extreme concentration of economic power can buy you political power…”
Khan also talked about how the FTC’s wins during her tenure are “durable” and could outlast the Trump administration’s policies. To find out why, and more about her own plans after January 20, then please do watch the discussion above.
Paid subscribers can watch in full while free subscribers can catch the first two minutes of the conversation.
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It is less than two weeks until US president-elect Donald J. Trump’s second inauguration, and between Elon Musk’s agenda-setting and all Trump’s controversial cabinet picks, the soon-to-be 47th president is already setting the stage for an even more chaotic and corrupt term in office.
In this first ‘Mehdi Unfiltered’ interview of 2025, Republican strategist and Trump Campaign surrogate Adolfo Franco joins Mehdi for a wide-ranging and, at times, heated interview on Trump’s post-election moves. Watch the full segment above.
Mehdi also challenges Franco on Trump’s 2020 election conspiracy theories, with Mehdi specifically asking Franco whether Trump’s fringe and unconstitutional legal arguments about election certification from 2020 applied to the 2024 election results.
“‘Only the vice president has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors’ – that's what Donald Trump said on January the 5th, [2021],” Mehdi says to Franco. “So, I'm asking, if Kamala Harris had said on Monday ‘Adolfo Franco and Donald Trump said there was massive cheating in Pennsylvania, I reject the electors from Pennsylvania,’ you support her power to do that?”
“I think she would have had a basis to do that had the election been close to her,” Adolfo says.
Mehdi asked Franco about Trump falsely claiming that he has “always been in favor” of the H1-B visa program, after Elon Musk announced he would go to “war” to protect the legal immigration program.
“That's a lie, Adolfo. He said in 2016 in a presidential debate and across the campaign that the H-1B visa program was, quote, ‘very bad,’ ‘unfair’ for US workers and, quote, ‘we should end it,’ ” Mehdi says to Adolfo.
“I don’t think it’s a lie. I think he’s for the program, but it needs to be reformed… It’s been a system that’s been used many times to sue employers because of its use,” Adolfo responds.
On the topic of the H1-B debate, Mehdi and Adolfo also discussed a tweet Elon Musk agreed with on Twitter that referred to American workers as “r*tarded,” with Franco saying that Musk, “needs to apologize.”
If you are a paid subscriber, watch the full interview to hear Mehdi challenge Franco on Trump’s cabinet picks and their controversial records, the president-elect’s flip-flop on the TikTok ban, and the dangerous misinformation Trump has been spreading about the New Orleans attack that took place early on New Year’s Day.
Free subscribers can watch the first 12 minutes of the segment for free. To access the full interview, consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
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In 2023, Humza Yousaf made history when he was elected as Scotland’s first minister, making him the first Muslim leader of a Western democracy. Yet, that term was cut short this past spring after Yousaf was forced to resign from the post, as his coalition government fell apart.
Since then, Yousaf has remained a backbench member of the Scottish Parliament.
However, in this exclusive interview with Zeteo in London, Humza Yousaf announces that he will not be seeking re-election to the Scottish Parliament in 2026, telling Mehdi that it’s time for him to “step away from frontline politics.”
“I think the time is right for me to step down, step away from frontline politics and make way for the next generation of elected members,” Yousaf says to Mehdi.
In this wide-ranging interview, the former leader of Scotland discusses his fallout with the Green Party earlier this year, which ultimately led to the collapse of his coalition government, saying that terminating the power-sharing agreement with the Greens was, “the right thing to have done.”
“My successor is no longer encumbered with that deal, [he] can make decisions in policy that he wants to take forward in our country's interest without having to negotiate and compromise with the Greens. They can do that on an issue by issue basis, which I think is the best way to do it,” Yousaf says.
Yousaf also discusses the Middle East with Mehdi, telling him that the UK Labour Party is complicit in Israel’s genocide on Gaza.
“There's no doubt in my mind at all they are complicit. And I hope and pray that I live to see the day that all of those who are complicit are held accountable for these crimes,” Yousaf tells Mehdi.
Mehdi asks Yousaf about his feud with billionaire Elon Musk, with the former first minister reiterating why he thinks Musk is, “one of the most dangerous men on the planet.”
Yousaf also sounds the alarm about reports that Musk has been considering donating to the hard-right Reform UK party (Musk has denied these reports).
Watch the full exclusive interview above to hear Mehdi and Yousaf also discuss the rise of Islamophobia and the UK race riots from this past summer, his party’s catastrophic performance in the UK’s general election this year, and the Pakistani government’s continued imprisonment of former prime minister Imran Khan.
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