Transcription
Hold up. I wake up. You finished or y'all done?
Morning everybody. It's DJ Envy. Just hilarious. Charlemagne the guy. We are the Breakfast Club. Lar Rosa is here as well. We got a special guest in the building. Yes indeed. Writer, broadcaster, Mitti Hassan. Welcome.
Thanks for having me. How you feeling?
Feeling tired.
Tired? Why so tired?
I'm not a morning person. I could never do a show called anything breakfast related.
What time do you usually wake up?
I mean, I wake up early. I just don't get going until later in the day. And I do my best work at 2 a.m.
Got you. 2 a.m. See, the funny thing, I'm the opposite. At about 10, 11, that's when my eyes start going really, really, really low when it's time to get take my little nap. I know I know you don't have a lot of time, so I there's a lot of questions I want to ask you. I want to start off.
Uh, in the past 24 hours, yeah. Uh, Israel has bombed Palestine, uh, Lebanon, Syria, uh, Qatar. Am I missing somebody? Tunisia. Phoenicia, what is that about?
What it's about is it's one country in the Middle East that doesn't have to abide by the rules that everyone else follows. There is no red line. They are, if they were any other country in the Middle East. If they were Arab country or Muslim country, we would be calling them a rogue nation because they just bombed, as you said, multiple sovereign countries, many of which had not attacked them. Tunisia didn't do anything to them. They bombed the flutilian Tunisia. And that's just in the last couple days. You go back further, they've bombed Iran and Iraq and Yemen. uh Syria. So they've bombed I think around nine different places in the Middle East over the last year which I can't think of any other country in the world that has done that in modern times.
Why no penalty? I want to know why. Period.
Yeah. Oh, so why they're doing it? We know we know we know Palestine. Why they're doing it? Currently, they are run by the most far-right government in their history, which is super belligerent, super aggressive, has people like Bazal Smotish, the finance minister, who talks openly of greater Israel, wants to have Israel with even bigger borders than the occupied territories they have. And why are they getting away with it? Because of our leaders in Washington DC, where I'm based, because of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, because of Congress, and because of both parties in Congress. Let's be clear, when it comes to Israel, I know every other issue in America is like Democrat versus Republican, red versus blue. Not on Israel. On Israel, it's a bipartisan consensus. Joe Biden lets him do whatever he wants. Donald Trump lets him do whatever he wants.
Why did they The Qatar thing was interesting because why did they buy Qatar? Didn't Qatar give Trump a plane? And didn't they say they're going to invest a trillion dollars into the US?
But they did give him a plane. They are doing a golf course with Eric Trump. Uh they are a very close ally of the United States. They host a US military base is in Qatar. Think about that. The United States clearly signed off on a military strike on an allied country where like 10,000 American troops are based, which is kind of insane if you think about it. No matter what you do, you can host an American military base. You can give the president a plane. You can host his family golf course. You can be really close allies, but if Israel wants to bomb you, the United States will let Israel bomb you. That's Think about how insane that is.
But I'm I'm still trying to wrap my mind. Well, their reasoning for Qatar was we want to take out the Hamas leadership which is based in Qatar.
What they omit to mention is that the Qatar lead uh the Hamas leadership in Qatar because the United States government asked for them to be in Qatar. Barack Obama in 2011 said, "I want you guys I want he said to I want you guys to host Hamas. I don't want Hamas to go to Iran. I want them to be somewhere we can talk to them." So the Qataris have always hosted Hamas, but with US and Israeli approval. They don't tell you that when they're bullshitting you.
So there is Hamas leadership in Qatar. Yes.
No one's ever hidden that. That's where they negotiate. That's what and by the way these guys were meeting when they were attacked to discuss a ceasefire deal which is another reminder that Israel and Netanyahu and Smoke don't want a ceasefire. Every time there's a negotiation for a ceasefire they attack the negotiators. Last year they killed Ismael Hane leader of Hamas in Thran. The guy was in the middle of negotiations for a ceasefire. They killed him. In Iran remember they bombed Iran the other day. One of the people they targeted was a guy called Ali Shamani. He went on NBC News just two weeks earlier and said, "I'm up for a deal with Donald Trump. We can do a nuclear deal." They bombed him.
Why would you bomb people who are negotiating peace deals and ceasefires? Unless you don't want peace deals and ceasefires.
Why wouldn't they want peace deals? Why wouldn't they? Because that constrains their vision. Their vision is we should have no rules. We shouldn't have to stop fighting for anyone else. We want to continue the war. Matthew Miller, who was Joe Biden, State Department spokesman, said recently that when he was in government, he heard Netanyahu say this war will go on for decades.
Decades. Long war. So is is if Hamas leadership is there, does that justify the bombing?
No, because they're there because we wanted them there. And you can't just bomb any sovereign country where there's people you don't like or you're opposed to. I mean, this is a very dangerous road we've gone down over the last couple years, right? We've burned down international law, the Geneva Conventions, all the norms and precedents. I mean, you don't think people around the world are watching this saying, "Why can't I do what Israel does?" Like all the the idea that we're going to go to Russia and be like, "You can't bomb hospitals in Ukraine." Putin say, "Why? Israel can bomb hospitals. I'm bombing terrorists in those hospitals." Like the arguments that they've deployed to justify torture, the bombing of civilian areas that can be replicated by every quote unquote rogue state in the world. Why not? Very dangerous road. We spent 70 years, the United States, the UK, the West, building up the international order. It's all been burned down over the last two years for one guy. Netanyahu.
Now, now, now Ben Shapiro was was here earlier this week and and you hit me. Why you start laughing like that? Why you start giggling like He gave a BS answer on genocide. Oh yeah. What? What exactly? What you want to we have a clip?
You don't think what's happening in Gaza is a genocide?
Correct. Okay. But the world's leading association of genocide scholars has declared that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Based off the pure definition of Well, it's not actually B if if you read their actual study, it's not based on the quoteunquote pure definition of genocide. They don't actually even define genocide in the document. The the question is not whether some sort of codery of people who call themselves experts in an issue are quote unquote experts on the issue. The question is whether the definition is met. The definition of genocide is not met in Gaza by any stretch of the imagination. And you can cite to me, you know, a group that I hadn't heard of until two seconds ago and nobody had heard of until two seconds ago that voted in a particular way. That doesn't make a difference definitionally.
So what what is a genocide do you?
A genocide is is the the attempt to forcibly destroy an entire population. Mhm. Which is not what has happened. So it's not the attacks on uh like the personal facilities needed for like survival like healthcare and educational institutions.
Well, again, Israel has shipped in more humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip than literally any army to in a a population that supports the enemy in literally all of human history. They've been shipping in about 4,400 calories per day per person into the Gaza Strip in the middle of a war in which the enemy is holding actual Israeli hostages underground who, as we've seen from some of the pictures, are actually starving.
Man, he's going crazy over there. I think you're being generous. You said he gave you some [ __ ] on Jess. He gave you [ __ ] on the whole topic, right? He said we don't give them that much money. We give them three billion a year. We actually give them close to 4 billion a year. And last year, we gave them $18 billion a year. He said they've been shipping in aid. You just played that clip. Israel doesn't ship in any aid. The aid comes from everyone else. He's acts like Israel's giving the aid. It's international aid that Israel decides to switch on and off whenever it wants. Uh but on the genocide question, it's funny that he kind of patronizingly says, "These genocide scholars, they didn't give you the definition. You rightly said, what's the definition?" And he said, "Forcibly destroying a whole population." That is not the definition of genocide. The 1948 genocide convention gives us the definition of genocide. Article 2, it says very clearly that genocide is any of the following acts with the intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, religious, racial or ethnic group. And one of those acts, killing members of the group, uh causing serious bodily or mental harm to the group. Uh inflicting conditions of life on a group that causes physical destruction. Uh preventing births within that group and taking children away from that group and giving it to another group. Five conditions. Israel's met at least four of those five conditions by any sane description of what they've done in Gaza. It is a genocide based on those conditions. The Israelis are saying it's a genocide. Just listen to what they say. They say genocidal stuff all the time. And here's the worst part. Israeli, you know, he brushes over the IGS. You some organization I've never heard of. Well, I'm sure they don't care that he's never heard of them. They are the International Association of Genoc. But let me just give for your listeners actual people who say it meets the definition. Um uh people like uh Omar Bov who is the Israeli Holocaust historian at Brown wrote a New York Times oped saying it's a genocide. Um Daniel Blackman, Amos Goldberg, Israeli Holocaust historians at Hebrew University. They say it's a genocide in Gaza. Schmal Leman uh all these Israeli scholars Raz Seagull they none of them by the way all of them said we didn't think it was a genocide at the beginning but we definitely think it's a genocide now. These are Israeli Jewish experts on the Holocaust. They're saying it's a genocide. Are we supposed to just ignore them?
Mhm. What what determines uh a genocide? The reason I ask that question is because I feel like most war can be classified as a genocide. It's the intent, right? Okay. So, if you express intent to destroy this group because of who they are, because their because of their national, ethnic, religious, racial characteristic, that's what makes it just a war. Like the Iraq invasion killed maybe a million people. But no, no, most people don't accuse George Bush of a genocide because the goal was probably oil security, whatever you want to say, it's protecting Israel. It wasn't to destroy Iraqis for being Iraqis. But here the Israeli government is saying we want to destroy Palestinians. We want to wipe out Gaza. We want to disassemble Gaza to quote Bazalot. Leave it in piles of rubble. And it's so interesting when you talk about intent and what makes a genocide a genocide. It's not about killings. Ben Shapiro says that the Chinese are guilty of genocide in Shing Jang against the Weaguers, right? And I agree with him. I think it is a genocide in Shing Jang, but they haven't mass killed the Weagers. They've locked them up in camps. They've tortured them. They've prevented them from using Muslim names. They've broken down mosques, intent to destroy a group, but they haven't mass killed them like in Gaza. But Ben says it's a genocide in Shing Jang. That's weird. He says Syria is a genocide, even though Bashar al-Assad didn't say anything as close to genocidal as the Israeli government. Bashar al-Assad killed around 1 to 2% of his population over 10 years. Netanyahu has killed minimum 3% of the Gaza population in less than two years. So why is Syria a genocide and not Gaza?
I I saw a lot of uh Jewish I guess correspondents on YouTube talking about the interview with Shapiro here and a lot of them were saying that if it was a genocide, Israel could wipe them out in one second. If it was actually a genocide, they could just take them all out if they wanted to. And that and they were saying that's why it's not.
So Pierers Morgan used to use that line on me whenever I went on his show. He's like, "Well, you could just wipe them out. They have nuclear weapons," which they deny having, but they do. What's funny is again Joe Biden, the US government says that Ukraine is a genocide. Vladimir Putin could wipe out Ukraine with a nuke tomorrow. Why is that not a factor? The Chinese have nukes. They could wipe out the weagers. I mean, it's a dumb argument to say you could kill everyone. Uh, we haven't. There's reasons why they haven't killed everyone because they probably think we're not at that point of impunity. Although, again, Smootrich, finance minister, what did he say last year? He said, starve everyone in Gaza if I could. Morally, it's justified. We can't get away with it. Sadly, they are getting away with they have starved a lot of people in Gaza. So it's it's a it's a ridiculous argument say we could kill everyone. Uh that's that's why it's not a genocide. But the genocide definition isn't killing everyone. There are multiple genocides. As I say Shing Jang, people say Ukraine, the Rohhingas in Myanmar, right? That's a genocide. Most people accept that's a genocide. They didn't kill everyone. They killed I think 70,000 people. Horrible. But they didn't kill all the Rohingyas.
So we'll never get to a ceasefire. This will never happen. Not anytime soon, unfortunately. I mean, who's going to who are they going to do a ceasefire with? The Habas people they're trying to kill. Where are they going to do the ceasefire in Doha that they're bombing? I mean, the Qatari said yesterday, we're done. We're out of the mediation efforts, which is exactly what the Israelis want. They don't want a ceasefire.
But then even when you get rid of Hamas, there's always another organization that pops up. I feel like we've been naming the same organization different things throughout because it's not about the organization, right? It's about the conditions. It's about There was a great cartoon, very sad cartoon right at the beginning of the after October 7th. They said, "If your solution to Hamas is to kill my is to kill this kid's parents, the first thing that kid does is create Hamas 2.0." Right? It's an insane idea that says, "We're going to," By the way, they they uh they apparently killed one of the Hamas leader sons in this attack. Didn't kill the actual Hamas leadership who all survived. I I believe I read that they killed one of his sons and his wife and kids have been killed in a previous conflict. Like, that's how you get people to the table. Like, it's insane, right? You cannot do this to a people. And a lot of Israeli generals, by the way, recognize this. I could go on forever about how many Israel have come out and said this isn't working. We can't just kill our way to victory.
What do you tell the people in the US? And the reason I I say that is, you know, I'm driving into work today and my daughter is supposed to go to the Freedom Tower tomorrow, right? Uh but then they say on the news, you know, we've gotten threats on all the bridges in New York and also the Freedom Tower. So, what do you tell the people in here that say, you know what, that has nothing to do with me. Why am I worried about it? Why should they be concerned and worried about it?
Oh, many reasons. I mean, first we should be concerned as human beings. What is happening in Gaza is the greatest tragedy of our lifetime. I was a guy who marched against the Iraq war. I thought it was a horror show. I thought we would never see anything as bad as Iraq in my lifetime. Again, Gaza makes Iraq look like a walk in the park. Like the tragedy in Gaza should affect us all as human beings. The the biggest cohort of child amputees anywhere on planet Earth. A child killed every hour, every day for the last two years according to Save the Children. So, it's a human tragedy. But also from a self-interested point of view, two reasons. One, it's our money doing the bombing, right? It's our we we paid for those bombs that killed those kids in hospitals and schools and refugee camps and churches and mosques and graveyards. We paid for that, right? Why the hell are we paying for this stuff? Did anyone ask the American people? All the polls show the American public are against this war. 8% of Democrats support what Israel is doing in Gaza. 90% of Democrats in Congress support what Israel is doing. Complete disconnect. Our democracy is broken. That's number one. And number two, again, self-interest, right? You don't think that some of these terrorist groups, militant groups are going to take out their anger on the Americans? I mean, our country backed this stuff. We are complicit in this. US intelligence has said since day one, we're going to see an increase in terrorist threats against our country because of what Israel is doing in Gaza. So, there's a selfish, self-interested reason. There's a financial reason, but above all else, there's a moral reason.
I love what you said, the first reason as human beings, cuz that's a conversation I was having with Ben. That's a conversation I had with other people. Whether you call it a war or whether you call it a genocide, can we agree that watching all these civilian casualties, watching all these kids getting killed is wrong. Do we can we start there? And I think sometimes what they've done is they've they've got the talking point down so much that you can't even Did you see the interview that Adam Freeland had with Richie Torres? Oh my god, that was disgusting. I mean, he's just sitting there. He's crying. There's Jewish He's like, "People are dying." And Richie is like, "It's Hamas to blame." They've just they robotically they have they've just got this talking point. If your response to someone telling you that a bunch of kids got killed in a school, a mass is to blame. If that's your instant knee-jerk response, what kind of human being are you? I think we're seeing a lot of sociopaths expose themselves in recent months.
How do you make people care about actual people and conditions then if people have these things drilled into because even when we were talking to Bishop Harold, that was one of my things that I kind of got is that he's used to talking about things in a certain way that's so indefinite and it's not it certain things aren't just like black and white. Like it takes the emotion out of it. Yeah. But like and not just dependent on him because that happens all across like everywhere you watch these talking heads. How do you get people to go back to like the human part of it when you're talking about something like a war?
It's a it's a it's both a simple and a complicated answer. The simple answer is we got to tell their stories. The complicated answer is they've made it hard to tell their stories, right? They have killed Palestinian journalists on the ground who are telling stories about what's happening around them. They've killed them with their families. They've prevented foreign journalists from going into Gaza. They've killed doctors uh who have who work in Palestine. They've prevented foreign doctors again from going back into Gaza. So, they don't want eyewitnesses to their crimes and therefore we can't tell the stories. I don't know how many of you saw the Guardian story yesterday where a sniper an Israeli sniper from Naplesville, Illinois goes to join the Israeli military and is shooting family members one after another. And when he's he was interviewed by someone pretending to be a journalist, sorry, pretending not to be a journalist. He didn't realize he was talking to a journalist. And he says, you know, I killed this guy and his brother came to get the body. I shot him, too. Why? And he goes, I don't know why he wanted the corpse. Why? Why was he obsessed with getting that corpse? I mean, this is cold. Those stories have to be told, right? And by the way, that was two brothers who were killed. Neither of whom were Hamas militants. The soldier says they just crossed an invisible line. They didn't know they weren't supposed to go down that road, so I shot them. Right? And by the way, when we talk about Palestinians, they're so dehumanized. The only way sometimes we can get people to listen to us, we say, "Look how many children they killed. Look how many women they killed. I'm sorry. The men aren't all guilty of a crime either. Palestinian, a young Palestinian man trying to go to school or work who gets killed. He automatically gets designated or terrorist because he's a combat age male. No, they've killed many, many innocent young men. By the way, the father also went to get his two sons bodies. They shot him, too. Oh my god. So, this is these are the stories we have to tell because Americans I believe that Americans are fundamentally good people and I believe that Americans don't want this happening in their name. They just don't know a lot of them. I think we don't want our taxpayer dollars going towards it and I think we're just desensitized to war. That's why I think during the violence in general in this case violence in general but that's why I think during the Vietnam war it was so impactful when they were able to show the images of what was happening cuz you know you might hear two three million people get killed which is ridiculous go yes but when you see it and realize oh these are just regular civilians even the words we use when they would say uh insurgents like insurgents in Iraq got killed like it's like we dehumanize people 100% and everything becomes Hamas right I did a I did a list for Zateo for my media about a year ago of like everyone and everything that is Hamas now like anyone who says you're Hamas the UN Hamas save the children Oxfam Hamas like charities Hamas any foreign government that says anything about Israel Hamas I interviewed Miss Rachel like YouTube child star she's she's Hamas like everyone is Hamas like it is ridiculous right if Miss Rachel is Hamas then you've lost the argument uh your book I haven't got a chance to read it yet but you just gave it to me this morning but it's win the art of debating every persuading and argument post that's the stupid cover that makes you look it's actually win every argument but the way it's written it looks like that that's one of the funny things about okay I don't want to argue and I don't want to win argument I just want to learn so why why do you think arguing is the I mean you end up doing it anyway but yeah yeah yeah um you end up doing it anyway so that's one thing you can't avoid it one thing I say whether you want to avoid an argument you can't therefore you should be equipped for it it's a book it's a very practical book about skills debating skills and arguing skills but also I do think arguing gets a bad rap right there's bad faith argument people who argue for the sake of arguing, people who argue without really believing what they're saying. A lot of cable news talking heads that have given argument a bad rap. But argument fundamentally, intrinsically is about uh disagreeing uh in good faith trying to come to a conclusion. I would argue that you can't find the truth unless you have a back and forth. We don't want to live in echo chambers where everyone agrees with each other all the time. We should have healthy debate, productive debate. That is how people discover truth, new ideas. I do think democracy requires healthy debate and argument. Going back to, you know, ancient Greece, you're having people have out flesh out the issues. Um, but it has to be done in good faith. What we've done in the US especially, and especially in our cable news world, I'm an XMSNBC host, we have a lot of bad faith argument. We have a lot of fake debates. And I think that's undermined. And this book is about saying, you know what, arguing can be fun. People who do debate club in high school, kids love, some kids love doing that because it can be so pure and so raw and so authentic. But we've lost that. Our media has killed what was good faith debate and argument. And this book is an attempt to try and bring it back.
How do you know when you're in one? How do you know when you're in a healthy debate, a good faith debate?
That's a good question. It's hard. Sometimes I realized halfway through. I did the Jubilee debate on YouTube, which was insane. I went into that obviously I knew there were going to be some bad faith people. I didn't realize all of them would be insane. Like I went with like notes and facts and figures like traditional all of it was a waste of time. Like these people are not interested in that stuff. So sometimes you kind of realize it in the middle of you know the Supreme Court was once asked how do you know how do you define porn? They were like you know it when you see it right like when you're in the debate and you know there's a bad I've interviewed people that I real I've interviewed like leading politicians from our government foreign governments and halfway through you realize like this guy is just not interested. This is just pure [ __ ] Yeah. I think the 20 v1 that's just entertainment. Like it can't be in good faith because it's literally designed to be in
Well, you say that, but what's interesting that now I'm going to sound partisan, but if you watch all the right-wingers who went on it, if you watch Jordan Peterson or Candace Owens, uh when they go on it, they get a bunch of like well-meaning, really earnest young liberals who are like, "Ah, but Mr. Peterson, what do you think about the, you know, this argument against God?" Like, I go on it and I'm like, "Get out of our country." And I feel like I feel like I'm a fascist. I'm a fascist. Yeah, I'm a fascist. Um, so I think I I do think like there is a real asymmetry in our politics right now, which is where like there are a lot of liberals, leftists who do want to have like a really earnest argument about policy, like how do we get Medicare for all? And on the other side, there's like how do we get rid of all the black and brown people? And it's not the same thing. I know the media loves to treat it as like both sides, the far left and the far right. The far left wants universal healthcare. The far right wants Nazism. That's not the same thing.
Yeah. When you jump into those debates, you know, it's so much misinformation out there. They really believe some of the stuff sometimes and some of the times which makes it horrible is some of these these news programs report misinformation like it's right. So how how do you debate somebody that that is getting misinformation that believes they are totally right. We see it all the time. We see it up here all the time as well.
So here's my thing. When I debate a lot of those people, I'm not trying to change their minds. I'm trying to change the audience. I'm always got my eye on on on the third agent in the room or not in the room at home watching on YouTube. And I think sometimes we get lost and like I'm going to change your mind. When I go on with some of these freaks and ghouls on Piers Morgan show coming to defend the genocide, I'm not trying to change their mind. I'm not going to change the mind of someone who's defending a genocide 2 years in, right? That person is a lost cause morally and politically. What I'm trying to do is get some people in the middle who may have accidentally come across this show or debate while they was while they were surfing on YouTube and maybe they're open-minded to say, "Oh, I didn't know that. I didn't hear that particular argument. I never heard the humanization of these people I just see as insurgents or militants or terrorists." So my my goal is always in the in the first chapter of my book is win over an audience. The audience is key. It's not about you and the other person. It is about the watching audience because I want to change people's minds. That's what I do what I do. Otherwise, as you say, it's just entertainment.
If you're not actually having that's a different perspective than I think a lot of people because I think a lot of people do focus on the audience, but they focus on the audience because they want an amen corner as opposed to actually trying to teach them. Yeah. And I I find that sometimes boring. I go to events and the whole audience agrees with me. It's nice. It's good for the ego. Everyone's applauding everything. But it's not I I much prefer having an audience. That's why that's why I do people like why do you go on Pierers Morgan show? It's this. I like Yeah. Whether you like it or not, you reach a huge audience of people who don't agree with you uh around the world and that is an opportunity. Now there's a there's a line like I don't I don't I know you go on Fox. I don't go on Fox. I wouldn't go on Fox should though. The reason I think you should is because I think look look how effective President Obama was when he went on there. Think about how effective John Stewart was when he goes on there. Think about Gavin New. Medie. You absolutely should. I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why I can't go. You would do the Jubilee but not go on Fox. I mean, would I do the Jubilee again though? That's the issue. So, so the thing is that Jubilee I have a I have a basic standard which is like you asked about debating and how do you know about like I won't debate fascist white supremacy. People say, "Oh, you should interview Marjorie Taylor Green." I'm like, "The woman is, you know, she's she thinks the Rothschild lasers call fires. Like she's she has weird QAnon conspiracy theories. She's antivaxer. She's a climate denier." Like I I don't think there is value in debating Holocaust denies, climate change denies, election deniers. It's just pointless, right? I'm not going to debate is up, down, is cold, hot, is black, white. I just don't think there's value in that. You've never been in a black barber shop in the hood. You hear some of that same rhetoric. I'm a I'm a loyal Korean barber shop guy. Talking about black is the the I've had I've had these debates. I'm just saying they're not valuable. I try and avoid them. But going on Fox, for example, I get the I get the argument what Democrats make like we should go and reach a new audience. Bernie does a lot of Fox. The problem is the Fox model is not built around educ. It simply is built around entertainment as you say. And also I do think Fox is an irredeemable company in the sense that it is a force for evil uh in this world in terms of spreading racism and misogyny and election denial and climate denial. And I just think me going on there, I know this sounds silly because it's a huge big fox and little old medie hustle, but I just I don't want to go on and legitimize them. I know that sounds old-fashioned, quaint, but I feel like if I go on there, then I'm treating it like a legitimate news outlet. I don't even call it Fox News. I call it Fox. It's not a news outlet. I mean, they paid billions of they paid hundreds of million dollars in settlement to Dominion. They are a propaganda outlet for the Republican party and for MAGA. So, for me, I just don't see the value. And by the way, the people who go on, you can go on and do a great job on Lara Trump. Problem is, for the next 23 hours, they undermine everything you said in that one hour. So, it doesn't really have an enduring factor, which is why when you poll Fox viewers, they are so misinformed. No matter how many Charlemagne's, Pete Buddha judges or Bernies go on. But then when I'm out in the street, I see the re the real reaction. You know what I mean? I don't see the propaganda that's being pushed or the message or narrative they're trying to push. Actual people come up to me and be like, "Hey man, I'm a lot farther right than you, but I I appreciate a lot of the things that you say." That's fair. You know, um, do you think mainstream journalism in the US has gotten too cozy with power?
I would dispute the premise of your question. Gotten too cozy with power? It's always it's always been cozy. When was it not cozy with power? Right now, we're in a different situation, which is we have media outlets joining up with a fascistic government. That's a whole different ballgame. But in general, the US media has always been too cozy with power. Never really taken an adversarial position against the people in power. Journalism should be adversarial journalism. It should be challenging the people in power. It should be, you know, uh, you know, what's the line? Uh, afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted. And we've really not done that in the US. When I moved here in 2016, one of the reasons people got to know me was because I do tough interviews and people were saying to me on the street like, "You're that guy who did that interview with Eric Prince. I can't believe our" And then I went to MSNBC and I started doing those interviews and luckily some other people started following me and now I think interviewing has improved a bit on cable. But in general, for example, we don't do tough interviews in this country with people in power. It is. You watch some of the Sunday morning interviews. It's very, very friendly. Like I saw one the other day where Marco Rubio just said some absolute BS and Margaret Brennan said thank you for joining us and it's like where's the followup? Uh so I do think that is a problem especially our interviews are not adversarial enough.
I'm going to ask you a question I I thought I knew the answer to how do we break the cycle to that? And the reason I say I thought I knew the answer to it is because I thought that these new media outlets you know the things the stuff that was popping up on YouTube I thought they were going to break the cycle but it seems like a lot of them are cozying up to power as well.
That's interesting. So, not us, not Zateo. We're not cozying up to power on either side. Obviously, we're very critical of the Republican party, but we're also critical of the Democratic party as well. Uh when when we need to be um I think yeah, a lot of the quote unquote independent outlets are not that independent. Uh you look at someone like Tucker Carlson. I saw him on the Piers Morgan show talking Pier Morgan. Again, too many name checks appear. He was on the show this week and I heard him say, you know, I do like Donald Trump. I campaigned for him. I don't think journalists should be campaigning for politicians. I just don't think that's our role. if you call yourself a journalist. I mean, I everyone knows my preference is in election. I don't want Donald Trump to be president. I didn't want him to win last year, but I didn't go out and like do events for Kla Harris. That would be insane. So, I think, you know, that's a real problem that a lot of people on the right obviously. I mean, the Epstein, the Epstein story is the classic example, right? It was independent quote unquote media that led that story even more than Fox. It was the right-wing YouTubers and podcasters that really pushed Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, Epste. And then they got those stupid files and they waved them outside the White House. And then it turns out there aren't, you know, the Epstein files are not out. They haven't been released. They're never going to be released. And these guys just went silent. They were like, "We trust the president." Wow. I mean, imagine saying that. First of all, no journalist should ever say we trust the president. Any president. Certainly, you should never trust a man who lies with every breath.
What do you think will emerge as like the leading place in media? Because it's not cable news anymore. YouTube and online, it's like you got to know who you listening to, whether it's factual information. Yeah. like what will be that one like goto here's where we know we can trust that will emerge out of all of this mess.
I mean the shameless a small business of me says zateo come to my media side but the serious answer is I don't think we can predict. I think anyone who tells you they know what the media looks like in three four five years time is either a liar or a fool. I mean none of us could have even seen where we are today 3 or four years ago. I don't think if you'd said before the 2024 election that the big question is going to be did Kla Harris go on Rogan? If you'd said that in 2020, people are laughed in your face. If you'd said 10 years ago, the guy from Home Alone 2 would be president of United States, people would have laughed in your face. So, I don't think anyone can predict where it's going. What I can say is obviously YouTube is a dominant force right now. I mean, that Jubilee is a classic example of that. You talk about people the number of young people. I was on a college campus last night. All the college students had really never seen me in anything except Jubilee. They were like, "You're the guy from that circle debate." So, that the YouTube power, especially for young people, is massive. Obviously, that's a problem because it's owned by Google and Google has its own agenda, which ain't always great when it comes to misinformation. Um, you just saw the heads of Google and Microsoft and Facebook and Meta all sitting around the table with Donald Trump lavishing praise on him just the other night. So, it's not great that these big tech corporations control so much of our discourse, but that's the world we're in right now.
I definitely want the record to show that in February of 2024, I absolutely told the vice president she needs to go on Rogan and she needs to start going on Fox News. Yeah. Because my my thinking was Joe Biden is not gonna win this election in November unless you start getting out more in the forefront and showing people who you are so at least they feel like well maybe I can vote for her on the ticket. This is way before she even became the nominee or anything. This was February 2024.
Have you seen the extract in the Atlantic today from my book? I did. I was glad. She's saying that she's basically saying what you're saying. She's like I tried to get out there. They should have realized that putting me out there would help them look like they've got a succession plan that they have confidence in me and they didn't. Right. They No daylight. No daylight. And she, by the way, she I need to read the whole thing. I need to read the whole book. But like, she has to answer why she didn't just say, "Oh, get lost. I'm doing my thing." I can't wait to read it. I want to read you something from that uh expert that came excerpt that came out today. Uh she says, "I gave a strong speech on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Desperate people have been shot when they sw formed a food truck. And I spoke with families reduced to eating leaves or animal feed, women prematurely giving birth with little or no medical care, and children dying from malnutrition, dehydration. I reiterated my strong support for Israel security and called on Hamas to release the hostages and accept the ceasefire agreement then on the table. I also called on Israel for greater access to aid. It was a speech that had been vetted and approved by the White House and the National Security Council. It went viral and the West Wing was displeased. I was castigated for apparently delivering it too well.
What What do you think when you hear that?
So, I think two things. Number one, I think the Joe Biden administration will forever be complicit in a genocide. The genocide would not have happened had Biden not hugged Netanyahu close given him pretty much everything he wanted. Uh we you know we rightly castigate Trump right now but we have to remember this began on Joe Biden's watch. At any time he could have pulled the plug on the whole thing. He could have called Netanya and said end it now. It's over. He did not do that. He had multiple opportunities. Did not do that. Harris, here's a second point. I think Harris would have been better on Gaza than Biden. I think Harris definitely would have been better on Gaza than Trump. But it's very hard to persuade people especially my Palestinian friends will say no way. she was up to it up to a neck in it with Biden. I do think that like that speech and other little things she did were signals that she would be better on it. I had people in the White House who were on her side were telling me at the time Harris is definitely better than Biden. Although the bar is low. It's not hard to be better than Biden on Gaza. The problem is she didn't do it right. She didn't take that opportunity and she, you know, we'll never know, right? It's one of the great counterfactuals. Would Israel be bombing Qatar and Iran and ethnic cleansing now if Kla Harris is president? We'll never know because she didn't take the opportunity to, you know, politely throw Joe Biden under the bus. She went on the view. For me, the day I knew she lost that election when she went on the view and they say, "What would you do differently to Joe Biden?" And she says nothing, right? I'm not even saying Gaza. I'm not even saying she should have come out and be like, "I'm going to recognize a Palestinian state and I'm going to stop now." Just anything, healthcare, the economy, immigration, nothing. Right? It's a change election. People want change. People aren't happy with America. All the polling told us people were dissatisfied with the economy. Dissatisfied with direction. You come in and you go, I'm gonna take away from Joe Biden, but it's going to be the same. That is insanity. Whoever is advising us should never work in politics again. I know they're all trying to rehabilitate their careers. That was an insane electoral strategy. I agree. It's my opinion um that regard we I don't know what's going to happen for her in the future, but what I like about what she's writing in this book to your point, I've been saying it over and over, whoever is going to lead the Democratic party in the future, you have to throw the Biden administration under the bus. I think you have to I think you have to throw all of the previous Democrats in the house. I agree. The whole regime I mean we're talking about Epste right now. I mean Bill Clinton is in Bill Clinton's in the book, right? He's in the birthday book. Uh he he you know she Gileain was at all the family events hanging out with Chelsea and rest. I mean all of them got to go. I mean Donald Trump won in 2016 when he took on the entire Republican establishment. Let's not forget how he won in 2016. I was I remember watching a debate. I was sitting on my couch. It was a debate in 2015 and he goes on TV and he says he says to Jeb Bush, he goes, "Well, the Twin Towers came on down under your brother." Oh, he didn't do he didn't just say that to a Republican crowd. Instead of getting booed, he gets booed by a few people. Crowd cheer. His polling goes up, right? He throws the Bushes under the bus happily blames them for
Iraq 9/11, even though Trump supported the Iraq war. But he throws them all under the bus, right? You have to be able to. The Democratic convention last year had Clinton and Obama and Hillary still speaking. Get rid of these people. People are done. Whether you think they were good or bad presidents, and they all had pros and cons, Clinton, Obama, uh, Biden, they all did good things and bad things, move on. You got to be forward-looking. We're here in New York. You have a candidate who's forward-looking. Stop living in the past. Why is Bill Clinton, a man who hasn't been president for 25 years, speaking at the DNC? Why? What do you think about the mayor race in in New York?
Hold on. Before we get to that, what you said is so profound just now, and I'm going to tell you why. 2016, that's exactly what Trump did. But Trump was also an outsider. We know nobody in the Democratic party is going to do that. I love a lot of these people. I love Governor Josh Shapiro. I like Wes Moore. They all have red lines. They're not people they won't criticize. Yeah. That's why it has to be somebody like a John Stewart. Yeah. It has to be an outsider. I agree. They're the only ones that's going to throw them under the bus. I agree. Or outsider or or kind of fresh blood. To go back to Amandi, who is within the party but has the guts to take on the establishment. I mean, John Stewart, obviously you and I are big fans of John Stewart and running. I wrote a piece saying he should throw his hat in the ring. I'm not saying he's going to be the best president or he should be president. I'm saying the Democratic presidential primary debates could do with a John Stewart on stage throwing some fireworks and hand grenades in.
Now, what do you think about the the mayor race in New York City? I think it's great. I'm loving it. I'm happy Trump's about to, they say Trump's going to pull in Adams, so it's it's a little easier. Yeah. I mean, if you look at the polling that came out this week, if you add up Adams, SWA, and Cuomo, they do have a marginal lead on Madani. Clearly, Mandani is benefiting from a divided opposition. But I I think that's very simplistic to suggest that all of the people who support those candidates would immediately go to another candidate. There are a lot of people who support Adams and SA, I'm sure, who look at Cuomo and be like, if our guy's not in the race, we're backing Mani, we're staying at home. Right? This idea that Cuomo will automatically command support from the other guy. It's I mean, Zoran Mandani is both a once-in-a-generation political talent in terms of his communication skills, in terms of his policy platform, in terms of his charisma. He's once in a generation, like Obama-esque. No doubt about that. Even his enemies concede that. But at the same time, he's also benefited. He's a lucky candidate in that he has his opposition divided between three people, two of whom are clearly freaks. And I'm not talking about Curtis Sliwa. I don't know if he's a once-in-a-lifetime generational talent. I think that he's just speaking to common sense issues when he's walking around saying, you know, New York is too affordable and he's talking about affordability. How's he saying it? He's just saying it. He's saying in a way that resonates. He's saying, and I know he has a great, I know the people on his team, he has a great social media team and they make the snazzy videos, but you could take a bunch, you could take a hundred random House Democrats, hundred random House Democrats, pick them out of a hat and put them in those videos and those videos wouldn't work. The videos are brilliantly made, but it's Zoran's face. It's Zoran's voice. It's his natural humor. It's his charisma. It's his ability to reach people. He's got that big smile. Don't underestimate the power of that big smile. Uh, he's Muslim like me. So unfortunately, I don't have that big smile. So I have resting angry Muslim face. So I can't run for. But he, sorry. Why didn't his rap career work then if he sold such such a great? I do, I do like messaging. I do political analysis. You can tell me why his rap didn't work. I'm telling you as a politician, if he was not born in Uganda, the morning after he wins that mayoral race, he would be the top of that 2028 primary field that we talk about. People would immediately say he's the guy who should be president.
You know, I think, you know, um, it's interesting because I always say progressives and liberals cannibalize themselves because they want purity. Y. And I see people getting upset with him because he was on Al Sharpton and he said he would, he he would discourage the globalized the in, how do you pronounce it? Inifat, inif phrase. And people are like, "Oh, see, he's already bowed down. He's already, he's already, you know, in Israel." It's just like, you're in New York City. You you need some Jewish people to vote for you. You you didn't do that well with black people. You're going to need them as well. Why would you not understand the politics of that? Yeah, there is. And I believe he believes that. No, there is politics to that. I would point out, by the way, that even before he shifted a little bit on this position, he was already leading with Jewish voters in New York. The the BS smear campaigns were not working, right? You had the ADLs and the Bill Amans and the Donald Trump saying, "This guy's an anti-Semite," but Jewish New Yorkers are too smart for that. They're like, "No, he's our preferred candidate." He has a double-digit lead amongst Jewish New Yorkers. So I don't think he actually does need to shift on this. But if he is shifting on it, fine. On the language, I think we got to look. First of all, you're right. The purity tests are pointless here. The choices between him and Andrew Cuomo, the choices between Zoran Mandani, a man who came on my show a year ago when he was polling at 1% and said, "If Benjamin Netanyahu comes to New York, I'll arrest him because there's a arrest warrant out from the ICC." That's one choice. The other choice is Andrew Cuomo, a man who said, "Hey, Mr. Netanyahu, can I represent you at the International Criminal Court? I'll be your lawyer to defend your war crimes." That is the choice fundamentally on Israel. If Israel is your issue and you're voting on that, even though the mayor of New York doesn't control foreign policy, if that is your big issue, there's no choice, right? It's it's the guy who said he'll arrest Net versus the guy who said, "I'll be Net's lawyer." There's no starker choice than that.
Um, but look, I you're right. The problem is there's a lot of people in the activist class, which is which does, and I get it. I understand it's a very emotive issue. People don't want to feel like they're being thrown under the bus. I understand why a lot of activists upset with the change because there has been the smear that if you say "river to the sea," Palestine will, you're genocidal. That's not at all what people mean by that. Um, but I think you're right. The big picture, you're right. Like the the right looks for the right looks for converts. The left looks for traders. That has always been the case in my lifetime. The left are the masters of circular firing squads. We turn on each other much quicker than we turn on our actual opponents. And that's always been a problem. That's not new.
So, do you like depressing, but it's not new. So, knowing that, do you like his chances? Yes. Okay. I do like his chances. Um, and I wish I wish if slash when he wins, uh, he was able to run for president, but we have an amendment to the constitution that says he can't. Although, if Donald Trump can run for a third term, Manny should run for. I don't even like that. I don't even know why we're even entertaining that conversation. Donald Trump, unfortunately, cuz he keeps saying it. If Donald Trump runs for a third term, it's over, man. I know. Like, we're like that's not going to be a free and fair election. We would be fooled to even. I don't think there will be an election. He wouldn't run in the election. He would simply cancel the election saying national emergency. He's already floated this. You saw him sitting with Zelensky saying, "Oh, so you don't have elections because you're in a war and emergency." Oh, so if I had that here, we would be able not to have the. He's already thinking with Trump. He's always part trolling, part joking, but part serious. And Steve Bannon, by the way, who is a very serious figure, has been very open about the fact that they are working on a plan to keep him in office beyond 2028.
Do you believe in Democrats moving forward? The big D Democratic party. That's the whole. I haven't. Not under the leadership of the current folks. Oh, I I I've openly said that Hakeem Jeff and Chuck Schumer should go. They need to stand down. They are not, as you as you called him, Tupac Shakur, is not the man uh for this moment. Uh, they are ludicrous in their interventions. They both keep saying, "Oh, we need a strongly worded letter." Like, "This is not." They lit. I'm not even making that up. That's not me being sarcastic. They've literally on the record saying, "The AG of DC did a really good letter." Chuck Schumer is like, "I wrote a really good letter about Harvard." Like, this is not the time for letters, right? American democracy is on the line. We may not have a free and fair election in 2028. And these two guys are pining for a golden age of bipartisan politics that never existed and certainly doesn't exist right now. We need people who are going to fight. And I say this not as a big D Democrat. I'm not a Democrat. A small D Democrat. Someone who believes in democracy, wants my kids to grow up. In a Democratic America. We we only have two parties. So the opposition party has to do the fighting for us. These people don't fight. Nobody believes that Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeff are fighters. But there are other Democrats who can. Just as you say, they're too scared to challenge. Who are the people that become like the voice or like the, you know, like you have like people that you point to that that do have a fight. Yeah. That do have the fight.
There are Democrats who fight, but who, so if I'm, I mean, there there are obvious people like the AOCs of this world. Uh, the Ilhan Omars, the Rashida Tlaibs, and the Squad, who who are very outspoken. Uh, but there are other people. There's Jasmine Crockett's got a big following now. She's been very outspoken from Texas. Uh, in the Senate, there's people like Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who went to El Salvador when apparently Hakeem Jeff was telling don't go to El Salvador. It's unpopular issue. Chris Van Hollen went to El Salvador and got Kilmer Garcia back. He came back because of people like Chris Van Hollen going out there and picking that fight. Uh, so I think there are Democrats who are willing to speak out on some issues. Jamie Raskin is always very strong on constitutional issues. There are a bunch of them, but they just don't have leadership roles because Democrats are in this kind of, why Chuck Schumer lost the Senate. He should have resigned the next day. Like, you lose an election, you should stand down. We live in a country where you lose an election on the Democratic side, you don't stand down. On the Republican side, you say you won. Like, we need to get back to, you lose, you quit, you move on with your life, build a library, whatever it is. These, we have a gerontocracy in this country. We have a bunch of old people who do not want to give up power.
How detrimental do you think it's going to be if Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeff refuse to endorse Mandani and then like he loses, how detrimental do you think it's going to be to him in the whole? Oh, it would be so bad. Yeah, it would be so bad. I mean, AOC made this point this week, and I've made this point before. Hakeem Jeff is on the record. You can pull up his Twitter right now. There's a tweet still, he didn't even delete the tweet where he's like, "Vote blue no matter who." He's one of those guys. "Vote blue no matter who." Apparently, there was an asterisk that we didn't see that says, "Vote blue no matter who unless you're a progressive, then we'd have to vote for you." That's the kind of that's the kind of nonsense that they're pushing out. So, I think it's going to hurt them, right? In 2028, let's say we get a centrist candidate and Democrats say, we got to stop Trump or Vance or whoever it is. Got to get behind the candidate. You may not like all of Gavin Newsom's politics or JB Pritzker. Got to get behind him. And I get that argument. You got to get behind the guy who's opposing the fascist. A lot of people on the left are going to say, "Are you joking? Are you kidding me? Where was this in New York? When did you get behind?" They're doing huge long-term damage to their ability to energize and get their base out because they're basically saying, "Nah, you don't have to vote for every Democratic candidate." No, we were just kidding. If you want, we can all withhold our nominations. When you see Jill Stein and Hokll and and Jeff and Schumer, I mean, this is their state. This is their city. To not endorse your own candidate in your own city when you want a landslide is insane. Like, people can see how hypocritical you are. And by the way, on Jeffries, just one quick thing. They may win back the House next year. I'm not saying that Jeffries is so bad he's going to stop the winning back the House. I think they might win back the House because the anti-Trump wave is so strong. They'll win it back in spite of Jeffries, not because of Jeffries. But then you have another problem. Then you have Speaker Hakeem Jeffries. Democrats have some power. What are they going to do with that? Does he have a vision to create some resistance to throw some sand in the wheels and the gears? No, I don't think he does. Is he going to hold hearings? Is he going to go after Trump's corruption? Is he going to call? Is he going to be an actual insurgent speaker? I don't think so. Yeah. I don't like people who say, "Well, just wait till I get in position. When I get in position, I'm going to show you. I'm going to show you. Show me now. Show me now." Yeah. That's fundamentally it in an era where misinformation spreads faster than facts.
So, I know you got to go. How How do you balance? How do you? Okay. How do you balance calling out lies in real time without giving those lies more oxygen? Oh, that is the existential question of our time for journalists. I'm so glad you asked that question because I've struggled with it. I know you have. Everyone in my industry has struggled with this. When Donald Trump comes along and says like the 2028 thing, right? How do we talk about 2028 without normalizing it? The more we talk about it, the more we're like, "Oh, maybe he can." Right? Like that Trump knows how to plant uh ideas in people's minds, how to lay the groundwork, plant the seeds for his BS. And it's a real problem. So when you when you're trying to fact-check someone or say this is a lie, what you said was false. A lot of people just hear the lie. They don't hear the correction. So it is a problem. So there is a guy called George Lakoff who is a uh cognitive psychologist, I think is his title at Berkeley, wrote a lot of books called "Don't Think of an Elephant" and other. He used to be very popular in the Democratic party. Nancy Pelosi used to get advice from him. He said early on in the Trump era that you got to respond with what's called a truth sandwich. Right? If you're confronted with someone lying all the time, you got to tell the truth. Say what the truth is first, then rebut the lie, then say the truth again. Right? The lie has to be enveloped in truth. Otherwise, people will only ever hear the lie. So it takes more time, it takes more effort. And obviously, we live in a world of hot takes and cable news and people up against ad breaks. So it becomes hard for journalists to do that. But that is really the only demonstrable proven way of really rebutting this stuff.
But how impactful is that in reality because even if you do the sandwich, uh, whatever outlet is going to grab what's in the middle because that's what people, you know what I mean? Like that that's what get people. And that's and then that leads us to the question of which is, are there more outlets grabbing the lie or more outlets grabbing the truth? And that comes back to a wider discussion about what does our media landscape look like right now. We have CBS News basically now becoming an extension of the Donald Trump administration. They've just appointed an ombudsman who is a Trump donor, pro-Israel guy, was nominated for Trump. He's going to be the guy in charge of CBS News standards. Fantastic. Goodbye CBS. Goodbye 60 Minutes. So the media landscape is heading in a very right-wing direction, which makes independent media so important, right? That is the only option now because the corporations are not coming to save us. This idea that, you know, I worked at MSNBC. I loved every minute of it. But MSNBC, uh, which is now called MS now, I think it's being rebranded, is not coming to save you. Right? None of the corporate media outlets are coming to save you. No matter what good journalism they may or may not do, uh, they are not coming to save you because fundamentally, a lot of their owners, a lot of the C-suite have already bent the knee to Trump. And therefore, independent journalism becomes so important. Where are you getting your news? On Substack or on YouTube or on social media? Where are you going? A classic example of that, if you had just followed mainstream media for the last two years, you wouldn't actually know what's going on. If you're on Instagram, for example, and I say this as no fan of Mark Zuckerberg, but without Instagram, the Palestinian struggle in Gaza would not be known to the extent it is today. People like Motaz, Palestinian photographer, 15 million followers on Instagram. He got out the images in the very early days of kids being bombed, having their heads blown off, right? That was so important for people to see raw, uncensored, not having to wait for the nightly news with all the censored footage. They were able to see it themselves from Palestinians on the ground. So I do think it matters where you go to get your information. And we do need to support independent journalism. For people watching and listening, when I say support, that means you got to pay for it. Like, I know we live in a country where we want everything for free, especially young people. But a free press isn't free. It costs money to hire reporters and do fact checks and have lawyers to protect you from BS defamation suits. All of that costs money.
I got I got two more questions. You keep saying you left MSNBC. I don't know why I thought that you got fired because of your stance on Gaza. That's what I was. So, my shows were canceled. I had two shows on MSNBC and on Peacock. And my shows were canceled. There was a lot of coverage about why that was. Uh, they said to me, you can stay on as a guest host or on-air analyst, and I said, thanks, but no thanks, because it was 2024. I had a feeling it was going to be a big year with a genocide and an election with a fascist. And I felt like I needed to be somewhere where I could have my voice out there completely unfiltered, uncensored, uncontrolled. And therefore, it was a no-brainer that not only was I going to leave MSNBC, I wasn't going to go to another publication or outlet, I was going to start my own thing because I just wanted to be able to have that free voice. And it was because you were speaking loudly about Gaza and what Israel was doing to Gaza. You'd have to ask MSNBC. No, you you talk about you did launch your own show, your own network. What's the name of it again? Zeteo. Zeteo. What has that experience taught you about independence, sustainability, and just the future of news media in general?
I think what it's taught me is there is nothing that substitutes for authenticity. And you guys know that sitting around this table. You know that from talking to your listeners, meeting people on the street. What's we we've grown very fast. Touch wood. I mean, we have half a million subscribers on Substack. We have 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube. That's in just a year and a half. And that is because people wanted to hear authentic coverage. They wanted to hear my voice. And not just my voice, but some of our reporters and contributors. We've got people like Naomi Klein and Greta Thunberg and Bassem Youssef and other people contributing. And I think people want to hear that. They don't want to hear people who are self-censoring, who are checking themselves, who are looking over their shoulder at a C-suite or a standards department or lawyers. I think they want to see people who are speaking truthfully about the fascist threat at home and the genocidal threat abroad. They want to have a relationship with the people they follow and understand that they are putting their faith in those people, that group, that company to give them the truth. To go back to your question, where can they find? And I think that's the feedback I've gotten. And the sustainability issue is we've proved we're sustainable. We're a year and a half in. Uh, we are doing very well. We just hired two new political reporters from Rolling Stone. We're expanding our team. I have 15 full-time employees now. Another half a dozen contractors. So, we're growing. Uh, I I'm amazed. I can't run a bath. Like the idea that I was going to run a company. Friends of mine were like, "You're crazy. What the hell are you doing? You can't run anything." I said, "I know." But here we are 18 months later, we are running a successful progressive independent media company which is growing by the day. Uh, and I think that's taught me that there's a huge. People say, "People aren't interested in long-form journalism. People are interested in subs. They just want quick hot takes on." I don't believe that. That's not true. I think people are interested. That's why you're doing this show. That's why I'm doing what I do.
All right. Well, check out the book "Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking." And thank you for joining us. Go subscribe to the network. Thank you so much. Hey, don't be a stranger, man. Pull up anytime you want. Whenever I'm in New York, I'll drop you a line. All right. It's Mehdi Hasan. It's The Breakfast Club. Good morning. I wake up. The Breakfast Club. Do y'all finish or y'all done?