Afleveringen
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“As citizens of democracies, we will be primarily concerned with situations where our own governments…our own political classes, our media classes are complicit. And that is what is going to outrage us long before we get outraged about what is happening in East Timor or Myanmar.”
That’s just one of the many reasons Indian Author Pankaj Mishra has spent so 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.
“I’m not actually quite sure what happened there at the Barbican, but they certainly pulled out at the last moment, fearing that they might also attract the same malicious charge of antisemitism,” Mishra says.
Asked whether he was ever concerned about being accused of antisemitism himself, Mishra said, “We've seen horrific things in the last 15 months. There's so much more to fear at this point than the charge of antisemitism.”
On the topic of censorship, Mishra criticized the way in which last year’s pro-Palestine student protests were suppressed and sabotaged by those in power.
“The way in which mainstream newspapers, mainstream politicians collaborated in demonizing those student protesters and then obviously kind of crushing them... that was one of the most horrific events of the last year, obviously in addition to what was going on in Gaza itself,” Mishra tells Mehdi. “I still think that those student protesters, even though they were crushed and silenced, offered us a modest hope.”
Mishra also went on to draw parallels between the state of Israel and his home country of India, specifically in relation to what India is doing in Kashmir.
“There are sort of these parallels not just between Israel and India, but also various other post-colonial states, including Indonesia for that matter,” Mishra explains. “What we look at is essentially a state – a newly sovereign state – unable to deal with problems of dispossession, the problems that obviously emerged during the creation of these states, and resorting to really naked violence to solve these problems.”
Watch the full interview with Mishra to hear him 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.
Free subscribers can watch the first 6 minutes of the interview. Become a paid subscriber to watch the full 24-minute interview and join the conversation in the comments below!
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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.
“If you’re going to say that you’re going to deal with government waste and you’re not going to be dealing with the Pentagon, you’re just one big hypocrite,” Ben Cohen, progressive activist and co-founder of the ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s, tells Mehdi.
“If the Pentagon were a publicly held company, the executives would be in jail today,” Cohen says.
For Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist who served in Trump’s first-term State Department, DOGE’s efforts to destroy USAID are a big concern.
“I’m all for reforms, but you would be naive not to recognize the miracle work they do each and every day around the world,” Bartlett says.
Cohen points out that defunding USAID not only takes food out of the mouths of people who are starving; it results in “essentially killing newborn babies by getting rid of HIV/AIDS treatment for their moms.”
In recent days, Trump has touted his plan to “take over” Gaza and said in a Fox interview that Palestinians won’t have the right to return to the territory. It’s a move Bartlett says “is more than problematic.”
“For a lasting peace to ever be a notion in this world, the Palestinians need to have sovereignty,” Bartlett tells Mehdi. “They need to have their homeland returned to them.”
If you are a paid subscriber, you can watch the full panel discussion with Ben Cohen and Matthew Bartlett above to hear Mehdi question the latter about why and how he served in Trump’s first administration, and to hear Cohen’s response to whether Trump’s plan for Gaza amounts to ethnic cleansing and why parent company Unilever is trying to suppress Ben & Jerry’s stance on Palestine.
Free subscribers can watch a 4-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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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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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, as well as the ongoing effort to dismantle federal agencies funded by Congress.
“He wakes up lying. He goes to sleep lying,” Omar said. “And frankly, I don't think he understands the laws of this country. I don't think he understands the Constitution. I don't think he understands the power that we have as members of Congress. And I don't think he understands or thinks that people are entitled to rights under the Constitution if he doesn't like them.”
Omar slams freshman GOP House Member Brandon Gill who launched his own attack on her by saying that the US would “be a better place” if Omar – a lawmaker and a US citizen! – were deported.
“I'm at the point where it's become really hard to have an intellectual debate with any of these people because the level of stupidity that they are displaying every single day is frankly embarrassing,” Omar tells Mehdi.
Since the interview took place, Rep. Gill has doubled down on his attacks on the congresswoman, urging his supporters to sign a petition for her deportation in a fundraising email.
Omar also criticizes Trump and Musk’s claims of massive fraud in the government agencies they are attempting to shut down.
“No one has shown us a single example of the fraud that he's [Musk] finding. What ‘fraud’ is, is what we as members of Congress debated and decided to fund legally. That to him is fraud,” Omar says.
Watch the full interview to hear Rep. Omar discuss the need for the Democratic Party to get more aggressive and use the leverage it has; Trump’s plan for the US to illegally take control of Gaza; and JD Vance’s suggestion that the White House can simply ignore court rulings against Trump’s executive orders.
It’s a fascinating and wide-ranging interview. Free subscribers can watch a 5-minute preview; paid subscribers can watch the whole thing. To access the full interview, do please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
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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, as well as Trump and Musk’s decision to “interfere” with South Africa’s internal politics.
“Even his [Musk’s] own supporters back home are reeling under the impact of what has been occasioned,” Rasool tells Mehdi. “They know that there is no land confiscation. They know that 30 years later, this is the most benign land reform that has come in. They know that Afrikaners and whites own 70% of the land to this day and all the farms – mostly – in South Africa.”
The ambassador also discussed the country’s ICJ case against Israel, which the Trump administration cited as one of the reasons for freezing aid to South Africa.
“The growing consensus in South Africa is that whatever we've experienced in South Africa is on steroids in Palestine,” Rasool tells Mehdi. “The template of apartheid has been completely magnified… That is the kind of DNA that we recognized as South Africans.”
Rasool criticized Trump and Musk for meddling in other countries’ politics, telling Mehdi that, “South Africa will not be falling into the temptation that President Trump and Mr. Musk have fallen into themselves, and that is to interfere in the internal politics of other countries, as was done with Britain and Germany and others.”
Watch the full interview above to hear the two discuss South Africa’s new coalition government, reports that South Africa may give Musk’s companies a pass on the country’s Black empowerment rules, and Rasool’s response to Trump’s plan to take over Gaza.
Free subscribers can watch a 6-minute preview of the interview. To access the full interview, consider upgrading to a paid subscription.
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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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“The left has ceded the space on antisemitism…and the right has smartly and strategically filled that void.”
That’s one of the big takeaways from award-winning British journalist and broadcaster Rachel Shabi’s new book, Off-White: The Truth About Antisemitism.
Shabi recently sat down with Mehdi for a wide-ranging interview about her book, the conditionality of whiteness for Jewish people, and why progressives need to establish their own trustworthiness when speaking out against antisemitism. “We’re going to have to do this work despite the bad-faith actors,” Shabi said.
“We need to be building our own credibility as people who care about and fight against antisemitism when we see it, including from the right, which is getting worse,” Shabi added.
Shabi’s book also explores the “new” antisemitism, which is pushed by supporters of Israel to demonize pro-Palestinian voices.
“The effect has been not only to silence and chill speech on Palestine at this urgent moment, which is bad enough, but it’s also completely degraded the tone,” Shabi said about false claims of antisemitism.
Watch Mehdi’s full interview with Shabi to hear more about pushing back against the right-wing weaponization of antisemitism, how Christian Europeans are responsible for the divide between Israel and Palestine, and the dangers of conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
Free subscribers have access to a 9-minute free preview of this interview. Become a paid subscriber to watch the full 31-minute interview and join the conversation in the comments below!
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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. Since Monday, Trump has issued a dizzying number of executive orders, compared himself to President William McKinley, and freed the same Jan. 6 rioters who tried to violently overthrow the government on his behalf just four years ago.
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.
In a wide-ranging interview for Mehdi Unfiltered, 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. “These tech bros have control over very large digital platforms that determine many of the ways in which we live,” Richardson tells Mehdi. “They also determine our public speech, and that is truly frightening.”
Richardson also looks at how historians will evaluate Biden’s presidency, what Democrats could do in order to rebound from their recent loss, and how to keep hope alive.
“One of the things that I expect to see going forward is a much clearer articulation on the part of the Democratic Party of what they stand for and how they are going to implement that,” Richardson says. “And by the same token, the MAGA Republicans have articulated what they stand against.”
To hear more from Heather Cox Richardson and how the state of the US compares to key moments in history, watch the discussion above.
“I think the combination of the fact he is himself seemingly not at the top of his game and he’s delivering things that many people expected would not happen is going to mean he’s going to face a lot of unrest a lot more quickly than a new administration usually does.” – Heather Cox Richardson
If you are a paid subscriber, you can watch the full interview above to hear the two discuss whether Biden should have dropped out of the presidential race, the MAGA agenda, and whether Trump is an aberration of history.
Free subscribers can watch an 8-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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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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President-elect Donald J. Trump has once again revealed his blatant disregard for the US Constitution, touting his plan to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants.
Of course, Trump being Trump thinks he can end it all by himself, via simple executive order – rather than the required constitutional amendment. But, as Mehdi points out in the video above, Trump not only would be defying the plain text of the 14th Amendment, he would also be going against over 100 years of judicial precedent.
Watch the short video above to see Mehdi rebut the right-wing critics of birthright citizenship, dismantle Trump’s lies on this issue, and brings receipts dating all the way back to the 1860s.
Paid subscribers can comment below.
Check out some of our other stories from the past week:
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The United Nations’ Special Envoy to Syria, Geir Pedersen, joins Mehdi Unfiltered to discuss the country’s new leadership, the path forward, and the UN’s role in it all. Addressing the latest attacks by Israel on sites within Syria, as well as the Israeli military incursion into the buffer zone next to the occupied Golan Heights, Pedersen tells Mehdi that these are illegal under international law.
“The message to Israel is that this needs to stop. What we are seeing in the Golan is the violation of the 1974 agreement. This is a very serious issue.”
Given the UN has listed the Nusra Front as a proscribed terrorist organization, and given Abu Muhammed al-Jolani and his Nusra Front spin-off Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) led the offensive against Assad and now controls much of the country, Mehdi asks Pedersen about the UN’s approach towards HTS going forward.
“This creates obviously challenges and I have been very open when it comes to this… The messaging coming out so far has been good… What we now need to see when they are in Damascus, and of course, they are not alone in Damascus, is that this vision is actually implemented.”
A precursor to opening a political pathway for such groups will of course be changing their “terrorist’ designations, something that Pedersen says he is willing to take to the UN Security Council.
“My message to the Security Council will be, yes, it's time to have a deeper look at this and see if it's possible to delist. But as I said, only if these things happen.”
Given Pedersen’s six years as Special Envoy for Syria, Mehdi also asks about the UN’s role over the last 14 years.
“We all failed the Syrian people,” Pedersen responds “and the United Nations, for many, will be the face of that, and we have to take responsibility for that.”
Watch the full interview above to hear why Pedersen is cautious in his hope for Syria, and the steps he believes need to be taken to see “Syria developing now, in the next days, weeks, months and years ahead of us.”
Please do consider also becoming a paid subscriber to Zeteo to support our independent journalism and make Zeteo the go-to place for exclusive interviews with high-profile guests such as this one!
In case you missed it, here is Zeteo’s interview with a former child prisoner of Syria’s notorious Sednaya prison:
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Meet rising Democratic Party star Anderson Clayton. At just 26 years old, she is the youngest-ever state party chair, representing the Democrats in the red state of North Carolina. But despite electing Donald Trump in the 2024 election, North Carolina’s red days may be soon behind it.
Democrats secured the races for governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and secretary of state in this election. They even won enough seats to end the Republican supermajority in the state legislature.
So why did voters elect both Donald Trump and Democrats, at the same time, in November’s elections?
“I don’t think that a political party defines how somebody is going to vote on the ballot. I think that they are looking for a person right now, and that’s why it matters the types of candidates that we run,” Clayton tells Mehdi in this wide-ranging interview.
While Democrats are playing the blame game on how Kamala Harris lost the election, Clayton says, “I don’t think anybody’s a lost cause. I actually think after this election cycle, we should be looking at every single person as somebody we're talking to.”
But it’s not just talking to voters that’s key for Democrats moving forward. “We need to run young people,” Clayton explains. She continues, “They're 60% more likely to vote for a young person on the ballot regardless of what political party that they're affiliated with. And I think that we have to look at young people as a voting bloc that wants to see themselves represented.”
Many young voters aligned themselves with the Uncommitted movement this election given the genocide in Gaza. While some Democrats blame these voters for the election loss, Clayton believes that Democrats can learn something from it: “It was them using political power in the right way because it's something where it's not discouraging people from the political process. It's saying, ‘No, let's use it to have our voices heard.”’
She adds, “That's something where Democrats should be taking it and embracing it … because right now people do not want to build up the Democratic Party. It seems like people are more interested in going around it.”
Watch the full interview to hear about political messaging in rural communities, the North Carolina GOP’s attempt to curb the incoming governor’s powers, and whether she’ll throw her hat in the ring for DNC chair. Clayton also reacts to Bernie Sanders’ criticism of the Democrats.
We are making this fascinating interview free for all subscribers to watch, but please do consider becoming a paid subscriber if you’re not already!
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Like most years, New York City spent much of 2024 at the epicenter of the most pressing stories in the United States, from college campus protests for Palestine to the trial of Donald J. Trump, to the indictment of their own Democratic mayor, Eric Adams.
“One of the few things [on] the ever-growing list of things in common between Eric Adams and Donald Trump is a sense of impunity and a belief that accountability does not apply to them,” New York Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani says to Mehdi.
In an exclusive Zeteo interview, the 33-year-old Mamdani – who will be running against Adams in the 2025 New York City Democratic primaries – talks to Mehdi about calls for Adams to resign over his recent corruption charges, and whether or not the indicted mayor is trying to cozy up to Trump for a potential pardon.
“What we've seen with Eric Adams is a continued insistence that he is not going to step down. In his own words, he is going to step up. He's not going to resign, he's going to reign,” Mamdani tells Mehdi. “I think he understands that his future is tied up with the sentiments of Donald Trump towards him.”
Mamdani – a member of the Democratic Socialists of America – responds to the critics who say that it was progressives like him that not only cost Democrats this year’s presidential election, but also shrank their margin of victory in traditionally Democratic strongholds like the Big Apple itself.
“I would ask them who was running the Kamala Harris campaign, what were the policies that were being run on? Who are the surrogates?” Mamdani tells Mehdi. “You are not going to see me in any one of these five boroughs, with Liz Cheney or Mark Cuban backing away from taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers.”
Watch Mehdi’s full interview with Mamdani to hear more on why Mamdani is running for mayor, how he would have responded to the pro-Palestine student protests, and how he would uphold the ICC arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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By now, you’ve probably heard that Donald Trump has appointed Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to co-lead the new Department of Government Efficiency — or DOGE, a reference to the 2013 meme that has since been co-opted by a lot of crypto bros and incels.
The duo have their sights set on wiping two trillion dollars’ worth of US spending to make the government more efficient. And nothing screams “efficiency” like creating a whole new department and hiring two people to do the same job.
But as Elon Musk goes on tweet sprees about how ridiculous government spending can be, Zeteo is riding to the rescue. In the spirit of the US coming together post-election, Mehdi lays out four ways Vivek and Elon can help save taxpayer money and make the US government more efficient.
By cutting from America’s ginormous and bloated defense budget!
Watch the full video above to learn how the US could save over a trillion dollars by cutting from just one government department, but also why Musk may not be keen to do so. And, if you’re a paid subscriber, leave your own suggestions in the comments below.
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What does an end to the war in Ukraine look like? Who will draw the short straw when the dust settles? And has the risk of nuclear war increased since the Biden administration allowed Ukraine to strike inside of Russia with US missiles?
These questions and many more are at the core of this debate on ‘Mehdi Unfiltered’ between the Quincy Institute’s Eurasia Program Director Anatol Lieven, an author on Russian and Ukraine, and the McCain Institute’s Executive Director Evelyn Farkas, a former Pentagon official under President Obama.
“The only peace deal that's going to hold while Vladimir Putin is in the Kremlin,” says Farkas, who supports Ukraine joining NATO, is one “that includes a security guarantee for Ukraine… that he won't view any peace deal as a ceasefire and attack later.” A fair argument to make, but a dangerous one according to Lieven.
“Article Five is regarded as critical to the security of Europe… by extending it to a country that we've already said that we won't defend, we're not strengthening the effect of Article Five, we're disastrously weakening it.”
Mehdi asks both guests whether the United States has any credibility insisting on sanctions against Russia over its occupation of Ukraine, given ongoing and unconditional US support for Israel in occupied Gaza.
“I think if you are addressing each policy separately, you just say to yourself, ‘what is the right thing to do in each scenario?’” says Farkas. “You need to look at each on its merits and see whether it aligns with U.S. interests and values.”
Lieven has a very different view, and sums it up in a few words.
“This is technically called hypocrisy, and that is how it is seen in the rest of the world.”
If you are a paid subscriber, you can watch the full debate above to hear why Farkas believes we should take Putin “at his word”, and why Lieven believes time is of the essence for Ukrainian sovereignty.
Free subscribers can watch the first two minutes for free, so do please consider becoming a paid subscriber today and financially supporting Zeteo’s journalism.
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Meet Jan Egeland. He’s a giant in the world of humanitarian affairs, having held top positions across renowned humanitarian and human rights organizations over the past two decades. The former Norwegian foreign minister served as the UN’s humanitarian chief before becoming the secretary general of the respected Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). Egeland was also on the ground providing relief during the Syrian Civil War and, before that, Israel’s 2006 war on Lebanon. He even coordinated relief in the aftermath of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.
And, yet, this is how he describes what’s happening in Gaza:
“There are so many horror scenes on our watch, but Gaza is, in a way, just this indiscriminate warfare on quite a different level.”
As humanitarian groups have worked tirelessly to get aid into the area, Egeland also noted how Israel has enacted a “starvation policy” against the people of Gaza.
“Of the few trucks that make it into Gaza, which is besieged, the majority is being looted, plundered, because there is no police there,” he tells Mehdi. “The police was bombed to pieces by Israel, and Israel is giving us aid routes that are unsafe.”
Engeland asks, “How come these gangs can roam freely, loot everything, and be part of a war economy that is enriching some in Gaza, but really meaning that the vast majority are at starvation?”
He was also “not surprised” when the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Secretary of Defense Yoav Gallant last week.
“The ICC was not a court created to take African war criminals,” Egeland tells Mehdi. “It was created to take international and potential war criminals. And I'm glad they have now indicted people on both sides because there have been war crimes on both sides in this horrific war.”
Watch the full interview above to hear what Egeland, who just returned from Sudan, says about the humanitarian crisis there, and what may be in store for Gaza under a second Trump presidency.
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We know a lot about Donald Trump, perhaps more than we’d ever like to know about someone known for being hateful and racist. Given how long he’s been famous for, you’d imagine we’d seen all the layers beneath his spray tan.
But we haven’t.
“I know Donald. I've known him so well over the years, decades, during his formative years and business career and his political career,” says Donald Trump’s nephew Fred Trump III, who poured a lot of that history into the writing of his new book ‘All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way.’
Fred’s interview with Mehdi this week gives Zeteo subscribers a behind-the-scenes look into the Trump family, with incredible anecdotes about his uncle and former president, Donald Trump. From uses of the N-word to an instance where he quotes his uncle in the Oval Office saying, “These people [the disabled], the cost, they should just die.”
Trump’s rhetoric towards disabled people cuts deep for Fred, who has a disabled son of his own, and who Trump also apparently said 'should just die' in a separate conversation with Fred, three years after that first one.
Rather alarmingly, Fred also tells Mehdi that Trump’s “purpose right now” is “definitely” to get revenge on his enemies.
If you are a paid subscriber, you can watch the full interview above to hear how Fred reacted to Trump’s insults in the past, his views of the Republican Party under the leadership of his uncle, and whether he thinks his book marks the end of the relationship with him.
Free subscribers can watch the first 5 minutes for free, so do please consider becoming a paid subscriber today and financially supporting Zeteo’s journalism.
*Fred Trump III’s new book ‘All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way’ is published by Gallery Books.
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