INTERVIEW: Mehdi Hasan Talks 'Win Every Argument,' Israel-Hamas, Genocide, Trump, Dems, NY Mayoral Race + More

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Breakfast Club — INTERVIEW: Mehdi Hasan Talks 'Win Every Argument,' Israel-Hamas, Genocide, Trump, Dems, NY Mayoral Race + More

Date: September 11, 2025
Hosts: DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne Tha God, Lauren La Rosa
Guest: Mehdi Hasan

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Episode Overview

In this compelling conversation, Mehdi Hasan, renowned journalist, author, and broadcaster, joins The Breakfast Club to discuss his book "Win Every Argument" alongside a host of urgent political issues. The discussion delves into the Israeli military actions in the Middle East, the question of genocide in Gaza, U.S. political complicity, the role and future of media, Democratic Party dynamics, misinformation, and even the New York City mayoral race. Mehdi shares strategies for good faith debate and his insights on independent journalism amidst shifting media landscapes.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Mehdi Hasan’s Take on Israeli Bombing Campaigns

• Scope of Bombings: Mehdi details Israel's bombing of multiple sovereign nations in the region, including Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Qatar, and Tunisia, emphasizing its unprecedented scale.

  “I can't think of any other country in the world that has done that in modern times.” — Mehdi Hasan [03:13]

• Washington’s Complicity: Mehdi singles out bipartisan U.S. support as enabling Israeli military impunity.

  "When it comes to Israel… it's a bipartisan consensus. Joe Biden let him do whatever he wants. Donald Trump lets him do whatever he wants." — Mehdi Hasan [03:58]

• Qatar Example: Israel bombed Qatar (a U.S. ally hosting an American military base) in pursuit of Hamas leadership—leadership intentionally placed there at U.S. request for negotiation purposes.

  “They don't tell you that when they're bullshitting you.” — Mehdi Hasan [05:16]

Genocide in Gaza: Definitions & Double Standards

• Ben Shapiro Clip Rebuttal: Returning to a prior Ben Shapiro interview, Mehdi eviscerates the argument that what's happening in Gaza isn't genocide, underlining the explicit legal definition from the 1948 Genocide Convention.
  • Genocide includes intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group via several actions, most of which Mehdi argues Israel demonstrates in Gaza (killing, starving, causing bodily harm, preventing births, transferring children).
• Scholar Consensus:

  “Israeli Holocaust historians at Hebrew University… say it's a genocide in Gaza. All of them said, we didn't think it was a genocide at the beginning, but we definitely think it's a genocide now.” — Mehdi Hasan [10:10]

• Double Standards: Mehdi points out that similar actions are classified as genocide elsewhere (e.g., China vs. Uighurs, Syria), but U.S. discourse shifts when it comes to Israel.

  “Netanyahu has killed minimum 3% of the Gaza population in less than two years. So why is Syria a genocide and not Gaza?” — Mehdi Hasan [11:09]

• Response to “Not All Killed” Argument: The claim that Israel could kill everyone but hasn’t is rebutted as a fallacy.

  “The genocide definition isn’t killing everyone… Rohingya in Myanmar—most people accept that's a genocide. They didn't kill all the Rohingyas.” — Mehdi Hasan [12:42]

Why Americans Should Care

• Moral and Practical Responsibility: Mehdi stresses that U.S. citizens have both a moral obligation and vested interests—financial (taxpayer-funded bombs) and security (increased terror risks due to U.S. support)—in stopping atrocities in Gaza.

  “What is happening in Gaza is the greatest tragedy of our lifetime… It's our money doing the bombing… We're complicit in this.” — Mehdi Hasan [15:03]

• Desensitization & Dehumanization: The conversation explores how language and media coverage often strip away empathy, reducing civilian deaths to statistics or political talking points.

  “Everything becomes Hamas. ... If Ms. Rachel is Hamas, then you've lost the argument.” — Mehdi Hasan [19:28]

The Art & Ethics of Argument

• Value of Debate: Mehdi elaborates on why good-faith argument is essential for democracy and truth-seeking, warning against the rise of performative, bad-faith debates in media.

  “We should have healthy debate… But we've lost that. Our media has killed what was good faith debate and argument.” — Mehdi Hasan [21:19]

• Audience Focus: He distinguishes between debating opponents and persuading the broader audience, aiming to reach those open to changing their minds.

  “I'm not trying to change their minds, I'm trying to change the audience.” — Mehdi Hasan [23:26]

• Debate Platforms and Red Lines: Mehdi refuses to engage with outright white supremacists or denialists, distinguishing the limits of effective debate.

  “I don't think there is value in debating Holocaust deniers. ... It's just pointless.” — Mehdi Hasan [25:06]

The Media Landscape and Independent Journalism

• Mainstream Media Critique: Mehdi claims U.S. journalism has always been too cozy with power; today, some outlets directly enable authoritarian trends.

  “It’s always been cozy. ... We have media outlets joining up with a fascistic government.” — Mehdi Hasan [27:16]

• Rise (and Flaws) of “Independent” Media: Many so-called independents, particularly on the right, are too cozy with political figures.

  “A lot of the quote, unquote, independent outlets are not that independent.” — Mehdi Hasan [28:40]

• Future of News: Importance of independent, transparent outlets. Mehdi spotlights his new platform, Zeteo, and the general movement toward subscriber-supported media.

  “There is nothing that substitutes for authenticity.” — Mehdi Hasan [50:19]

Democratic Party Critique & 2028 Election

• Kamala Harris on Gaza: Discussion of Harris’s record, constraints within the Biden White House, and her hesitancy to challenge the establishment.

  “She… signals that she would be better on it… but she didn’t do it.” — Mehdi Hasan [32:39]

• Party Leadership: Mehdi argues for sweeping generational change—moving away from figures like Schumer, Jeffries, and even former presidents, to clear space for new leadership.

  “We have a bunch of old people who do not want to give up power.” — Mehdi Hasan [43:01]

• Need for Insurgents: Suggests a Jon Stewart or a real outsider is required to ignite Democratic renewal, just as Trump did for the GOP in 2016.

  “It has to be an outsider.” — Interviewer/Host [36:10]

• NYC Mayoral Race (Zoran Mamdani): The city's progressive insurgent is praised for his skills, authenticity, and ability to attract diverse support.

  “A once in a generation political talent ... his opposition divided between three people, two of whom are clearly freaks.”— Mehdi Hasan [36:46]

Misinformation & the “Truth Sandwich”

• Fact-Checking Challenges: How to challenge misinformation without amplifying it? Mehdi cites George Lakoff’s “Truth Sandwich” method—enclose a lie with truth before and after.

  “Tell the truth, rebut the lie, say the truth again. … Otherwise people will only ever hear the lie.” — Mehdi Hasan [46:05]

• Power of Social Media: Platforms like Instagram gave direct, uncensored access to Palestinian perspectives otherwise missing from mainstream coverage.

  “Without Instagram, the Palestinian struggle in Gaza would not be known to the extent it is today.” — Mehdi Hasan [48:12]

• Need for Paid Independent Media: Authentic reporting requires public support; nothing is truly “free.”

  “A free press isn't free. It costs money ... to do fact checks and have lawyers to protect you.” — Mehdi Hasan [48:54]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “What is happening in Gaza is the greatest tragedy of our lifetime...Gaza makes Iraq look like a walk in the park.” — Mehdi Hasan [15:03]
• "I can't think of any other country in the world that has done that in modern times." — Mehdi Hasan [03:13]
• "When it comes to Israel...it's a bipartisan consensus. Joe Biden let him do whatever he wants. Donald Trump lets him do whatever he wants." — Mehdi Hasan [03:58]
• "It's a ridiculous argument to say we could kill everyone. That's why it's not a genocide." — Mehdi Hasan [12:42]
• “You can't avoid it. It’s one thing I say. Whether you want to avoid an argument, you can't, therefore you should be equipped for it.” — Mehdi Hasan [20:19]
• “We don’t want to live in echo chambers where everyone agrees with each other all the time.” — Mehdi Hasan [21:19]
• “I don't think there is value in debating Holocaust deniers, climate change deniers, election deniers. It's just pointless.” — Mehdi Hasan [25:06]
• “The right looks for converts, the left looks for traitors.” — Mehdi Hasan [39:35]
• “The media landscape is heading in a very right-wing direction, which makes independent media so important.” — Mehdi Hasan [47:31]
• “There is nothing that substitutes for authenticity.” — Mehdi Hasan [50:19]

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Important Timestamps

• Israel’s regional bombing & U.S. complicity: [03:04–06:43]
• Is it genocide? Legal definitions & scholar views: [07:40–12:23]
• Intent behind war & double standards (Uyghur/Syria comparison): [11:09–12:42]
• Civilian suffering, U.S. moral/practical stake: [15:03–17:27]
• Role of narrative/media, journalist restrictions, dehumanization: [17:27–19:57]
• Why Debate Matters, Art of Argument: [20:04–23:26]
• Mainstream vs. Independent Journalism: [27:16–31:16]
• Kamala Harris, Democrats’ future, and the need for outsiders: [31:16–36:35]
• NYC Mayor’s race, pitfalls of progressive politics: [36:35–40:54]
• Misinformation & “Truth Sandwich” method: [45:55–47:21]
• Independent media, authenticity, and Zeteo: [49:27–51:54]

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Conclusion

This insightful episode features Mehdi Hasan’s candid perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, U.S. politics, the failures of media, and the importance of authentic, independent journalism. It’s a masterclass in real-time rebuttal, good-faith debate, and unflinching advocacy for moral clarity, with a strong imperative for listeners to stay informed and engaged as citizens and consumers of media.

For more, follow Mehdi Hasan’s work at Zeteo.com or pick up his book “Win Every Argument.”

Transcript

[Podcast Host]

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[Mehdi Hassan]

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[Podcast Advertiser/Announcer]

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[Mehdi Hassan]

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[Mehdi Hassan]

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[Interviewer/Host]

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[Mehdi Hassan]

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[Interviewer/Host]

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[Mehdi Hassan]

And start growing my business. Took the words right out of my mouth.

[Interviewer/Host]

Just another day at the office. Hold up. Every day I wake up. Wake your ass up. The Breakfast Club. Do y' all finish or y' all done? Morning everybody.

[DJ Envy]

It's DJ Envy. Just hilarious. Charlamagne the guy. We are the Breakfast Club. Lauren La Rosa is here as well. We got a special guest in the building.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yes indeed.

[DJ Envy]

Writer broadcaster Minnie Hassan.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Welcome. Thanks for having me.

[DJ Envy]

How you feeling?

[Mehdi Hassan]

Feeling tired.

[DJ Envy]

Tired. Why so tired?

[Mehdi Hassan]

I'm not a morning person. I could never. I could never do a show called anything breakfast related.

[Interviewer/Host]

When are you tired? Usually wake up.

[Mehdi Hassan]

I mean, I wake up early. I just don't get going until later in the day. I do my best work at 2:00am Got you.

[DJ Envy]

2:00Am you see the funny thing? I'm the opposite. At about 10, 11, that's when my eyes start going really, really, really low and it's time to get. Take My little nap.

[Interviewer/Host]

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 in the past 24 hours.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

Israel has bombed Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Qatar. Am I missing somebody?

[Mehdi Hassan]

Tunisia.

[Interviewer/Host]

Tunisia. What is that about?

[Mehdi Hassan]

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 flotilla in Tunisia. And that's just in the last couple of days. You go back further. They've bombed Iran and Iraq and Yemen, 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.

[DJ Envy]

And why? No penalty.

[Interviewer/Host]

I want to know why. Period.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

Why?

[Mehdi Hassan]

Oh, so why they're doing it?

[Interviewer/Host]

We know Palestine.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Why are they doing it? Currently, they are run by the most far right government in their history, which is super belligerent, super aggressive, has people like Bazalul Smotrich, the finance minister, who talks openly of Greek 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, D.C. 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 let him do whatever he wants. Donald Trump lets him do whatever he wants.

[Interviewer/Host]

Why did they. The Qatar thing was interesting because. Why did they bomb Qatar? Didn't Qatar give Trump a plane? Didn't they say they're going to invest a trillion dollars in the uk but.

[Mehdi Hassan]

They did give him a plane. They are doing a golf course with Eric Trump. 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 10,000American 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.

[Interviewer/Host]

But I'm still trying to wrap my mind.

[Mehdi Hassan]

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 leader, 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, 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.

[Interviewer/Host]

So there is Hamas leadership in Qatar?

[Mehdi Hassan]

Yes. No one's ever hidden that. Everyone knows that that's where they negotiate. 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 Smote don't want a ceasefire. Every time there's a negotiation for ceasefire, they, they attacked the negotiators last year. They killed Ismail Haniya, leader of Hamas in Tehran. 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 Shamkhani. 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?

[DJ Envy]

Why wouldn't they want a peace deal?

[Mehdi Hassan]

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's State Department spokesman, said recently that when he was in government, he heard Netanyahu say this war will go on for decades. That's the way to use decades long war.

[Interviewer/Host]

So if Hamas leadership is there, does that justify the bombing?

[Mehdi Hassan]

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 of years. 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.

[Interviewer/Host]

Now, Ben Shapiro was here earlier this week, and you hit me.

[DJ Envy]

That's why you start laughing like that.

[Interviewer/Host]

Why you start giggling like that. You gave a BS answer on genocide.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Oh, yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

What? Exactly. We have a clip. You don't think what's happening in Gaza is a genocide?

[Mehdi Hassan]

Correct.

[Interviewer/Host]

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.

[Podcast Advertiser/Announcer]

Well, it's not actually. If you read their actual study, it's not based on the quote, unquote, pure definition of genocide. They don't actually even define genocide in the document. The question is not whether some sort of coterie 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.

[Interviewer/Host]

So what does a genocide do?

[Podcast Advertiser/Announcer]

A genocide is the. The attempt to forcibly destroy an entire population, which is not what has happened.

[Interviewer/Host]

So it's not the attacks on, like, the personal facilities needed for, like, survival, like health care and educational institutions?

[Podcast Advertiser/Announcer]

Well, again, Israel has shipped in more human humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip than literally any army in 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.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Man, he's going crazy over there. Kyle, I think you're being Generous. You said he gave you some bullshit on genocide. He gave you bullshit on the whole topic, right? He said, we don't give them that much money. We give them 3 billion a year. We actually give them close to 4 billion a year. And last year we gave 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 acts like Israel's giving the aid. It's international aid that Israel decides to switch on and off whenever it wants. But on the genocide question, it's funny that he kind of patronizingly says, these genocide scholars, they didn't give you the definition. And 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 two. 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, causing serious bodily or mental harm to the group, inflicting conditions of life on a group that causes physical destruction, 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 Iags, some organization I've never heard of. I'm sure they don't care that he's never heard of them. They are the International association of Genocide. But let me just give for your listeners actual people who say it meets the definition. People like Omar Bartov, who is the Israeli Holocaust historian at Brown, wrote a New York Times op ed saying it's a genocide. Daniel Blackman, Amos Goldberg, Israeli Holocaust historians at Hebrew University, they say it's a genocide in Gaza. Shmuel Lederman, all these Israeli scholars, Raz Siegel, 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?

[Interviewer/Host]

What determines a genocide? And the reason I asked that question is because I feel like most war can be classified As a genocide, it's the intent, right?

[Mehdi Hassan]

So if you express intent to destroy this group because of who they are, because of their national, ethnic, religious, racial characteristics, that's what makes it just a war. Like the Iraq invasion killed maybe a million people. But 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 Bizarro Osmotriz, 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 Xinjiang against the Uyghurs. Right? And I agree with him. I think it is a genocide in Xinjiang. But they haven't mass killed the Uyghurs. 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 Xinjiang. 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?

[Interviewer/Host]

Ben, I saw a lot of Jewish, I guess, correspondence 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 genocide, they could just take them all out if they wanted to. And they were saying that's why it's not so.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Piers Morgan used to use that line on me whenever I want 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 Uyghurs. I mean, it's a dumb argument to say you could kill everyone. 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, Smotrich, 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 it. They have starved a lot of people in Gaza. So it's a ridiculous argument. Say we could kill everyone. That's why it's not a genocide. But the genocide definition isn't killing everyone. There are multiple genocides. As I say, Xinjiang people say Ukraine, the Rohingyas 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.

[DJ Envy]

So we'll never get to a ceasefire. This will never happen.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Not anytime soon, unfortunately. I mean, who's going to. Who. They're going to do a ceasefire with the Hamas 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.

[Interviewer/Host]

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, because it's not about the organization.

[Mehdi Hassan]

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 apparently killed one of the Hamas leaders sons in this attack. Didn't kill the actual Hamas leadership, who all survived. I believe I read that they killed one of his sons and his wife and kids had been killed in a previous conflict. Like, that's how you get people to the table. 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 Israeli generals have come out and said, this isn't working. We can't just kill our way to victory.

[DJ Envy]

What do you tell the people in the US and the reason 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. 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 am I concerned or why should they be concerned and worried about it?

[Mehdi Hassan]

Oh, many reasons. I mean, first we should be concerned as human beings, of course. 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 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? 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's 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.

[Interviewer/Host]

I love what you said. The first reason as human beings, because that's a conversation I was having with Ben. That's a conversation I have 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? Can we start there? And I think something, what they've done.

[Mehdi Hassan]

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?

[Interviewer/Host]

Oh my God, that was Disgusting.

[Mehdi Hassan]

I mean, he's just sitting there, he's crying. There's two times he's like, people are dying. And Richie's like, it's, Hamas is to blame. They've just. Robotically, they have. They have just got this talking point. If your response to someone telling you that a bunch of kids got killed in school, Hamas is to blame. 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.

[Podcast Host]

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 Ben Shapiro, 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 certain. Things aren't just like black and white.

[DJ Envy]

Like, it takes the emotion out of it.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. But like, and not just depending 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?

[Mehdi Hassan]

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 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 Napersville, Illinois, goes to join the Israeli military and is shooting family members one after another 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. And he goes, I don't know why he wanted the corpse. Why was he obsessed with getting that corpse? I mean, it's 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 and he automatically gets designated oh, 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. 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.

[Interviewer/Host]

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.

[Mehdi Hassan]

In general, in this case, violence in general.

[Interviewer/Host]

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 because, you know, you might hear 2, 3 million people get killed, which is ridiculous.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Napalm, go, yes.

[Interviewer/Host]

But when you see it and realize, oh, these are just regular civilians, even the words we use when they would say insurgents, like insurgents in Iraq got killed, like, it's like, yeah, we dehumanize.

[Mehdi Hassan]

People 100% and everything becomes Hamas. Right? I did, I did a list for Zataya for my media about a year ago of like everyone and everything that is Hamas. Now, like anyone who said it, you are Hamas. The UN Hamas. Save the Children, Oxfam, Hamas, like charities Hamas. Any foreign government that says anything about Israel, hamas. I interviewed Ms. Rachel, like YouTube child star. She's like, she's Hamas. Everyone is Hamas. It is ridiculous, right? If Ms. Rachel is Hamas, then you've lost the argument.

[Interviewer/Host]

Your book, I haven't got a chance to read it yet. You just gave it to me this morning. But it's Win the Art of debating. Every persuading and argument.

[Mehdi Hassan]

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.

[Interviewer/Host]

Okay, I don't want to argue and I don't want to win argument.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

I just want to learn.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

So why, why do you think arguing is the. I mean, you end up doing it anyway.

[Mehdi Hassan]

But yeah, yeah, you end up doing it anyway. So that's one thing. You can't avoid it. It's 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 disagreeing 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 ancient Greece, you're having people have at flesh out the issues. 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 ex MSNBC 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.

[Interviewer/Host]

How do you know when you're in one? How do you know when you're in a healthy debate? A good faith debate?

[Mehdi Hassan]

That's a good question. It's hard sometimes. I realize halfway through I did the jubilee debate right 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 it. You know, the Supreme Court was once asked, how do you know? How do you define pornography? They're 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 and I realized I've interviewed like leading politicians from our government, foreign governments, and halfway through you realize this guy is just not interested. This is just pure bullshit.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah, I think the 20v one, that's just entertainment. Like it can't be in good faith because it's literally designed to be in good faith.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Well, you say that, but what's interesting, that 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, 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, 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. So I think, I do think, like there is a real asymmetry in our politics right now, which is where like there are a lot of liberal leftists who do wanna 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 health care, the far right wants Nazism. That's not the same thing.

[DJ Envy]

Yeah, when you jump into those debates, you know, it's so much misinformation out there. They really believe some of this stuff sometimes. And some of the times, which makes it horrible is some of these news programs report misinformation like it's right. So how do you debate somebody 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.

[Mehdi Hassan]

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 the third agent in the room or not in the room at home watching on YouTube. And I think sometimes we get lost in like, I'm going to change your mind when I go on with some of these freaks and ghouls on Piers Morgan show to come in 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 two 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 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.

[Interviewer/Host]

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.

[Mehdi Hassan]

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 much prefer having an audience. That's why I do people like, why do you go on Piers Morgan show? It's this. I was like, yeah, whether you like it or not, you reach a huge audience of people who don't agree with you 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.

[Interviewer/Host]

Why not? The reason I think you should is because I think, look how effective President Obama was when he went on there. Think about how effective Stewart was when he goes on. I think about Gavin Newsom people. Maddie, you absolutely should be.

[Mehdi Hassan]

I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. I can't go.

[Podcast Host]

You do the Jubilee but not go on Fox.

[Mehdi Hassan]

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 Greene. I'm like, the woman is, you know, she thinks the Rothschild lasers call spiers. Like, she's, she has weird QAnon conspiracy theories. She's anti vaxxer. She's a climate denier. Like, I, I don't think there is value in debating Holocaust deniers. Climate change denies, election denies. It's just pointless, right? I'm not gonna. Debate is up, down is cold, hot is black, white. I just don't think there's value in that.

[Interviewer/Host]

You never been in a black barbershop in the hood, you hear some of that same rhetoric.

[Mehdi Hassan]

I'm a loyal Korean barbershop dad never.

[Interviewer/Host]

Talked about black Israelites.

[Mehdi Hassan]

The. Look, 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 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. 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 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 Maddie Hussle, 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 dollars, they pay hundreds of millions of 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 Buttigieg or Bernie's go on.

[Interviewer/Host]

But then when I'm out in the street, I see 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. Do you think mainstream journalism in the US has gotten too cozy with power?

[Mehdi Hassan]

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, what's the line? 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, Erik Prince. I can't believe. 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 follow up? So I do think that is a problem. Especially our interviews are not adversarial enough.

[Interviewer/Host]

I'm gonna 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 the power as well.

[Mehdi Hassan]

That's interesting. So not us, not Zatteo. We're not cozy 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 when. When we need to be. I think, yeah, a lot of the quote, unquote, independent outlets are not that independent. You look at someone like Tucker Carlson. I saw him on the Piers Morgan show talking to Piers Morgan again. Too many name checks appears. 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, everyone knows my preferences 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 Kamala 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, Epstein. And then they got those stupid files and they waved them outside the White House. And then it turns out there are, 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.

[Interviewer/Host]

Wow.

[Mehdi Hassan]

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.

[Podcast Host]

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 gotta know who you listening to, whether it's factual information. Yeah, yeah. Like, what will be that one? Like, go to, here's where we know we can trust that will emerge out of all of this mess.

[Mehdi Hassan]

I mean, the shameless small business in 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 3, 4, 5 years time is either a liar or a fool. I mean, none of us could have even seen where we are today three or four years ago. I don't think if you'd said before the 2024 election that the big question's gonna be, did Kamala Harris go on Rogan? If you'd said that in 2020, people laughed in your face. If you'd said 10 years ago the guy from home alone, two would be president, 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, 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 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. 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.

[Interviewer/Host]

I definitely want the record to show that in February 2024, I absolutely told the vice president she needs to go on Rogan and she needs to start going on Fox News.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

Because my thinking was Joe Biden is not going to 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 was way before she even became the nominee or any. This was February 2024.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Have you seen the extract in the Atlantic today from my book?

[Interviewer/Host]

I did. I was going.

[Mehdi Hassan]

And 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 a whole book. But like, she has to answer why she didn't just say, oh, get lost, I'm doing my thing.

[Interviewer/Host]

I can't wait to read it. I want to read you something from that expert that came excerpt that came out today. She says, I gave a strong speech on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Desperate people have been shot when they swarmed a food truck. And I spoke of 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's security and called on Hama release the hostages and accept a 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 do you think when you hear that?

[Mehdi Hassan]

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. 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 Netanyahu 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 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 of Kamala Harris was president? We'll never know because she didn't take the opportunity to 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 just anything. Health care, 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 going to take it from Joe Biden, but it's gonna 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.

[Interviewer/Host]

I agree. It's my opinion that I don't know what's gonna 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 gonna lead the Democratic Party in the future, you have to throw the Biden administration under the bus. You have to.

[Mehdi Hassan]

I think you have to throw all of the previous Democrats in the House.

[Interviewer/Host]

The whole old regime.

[Mehdi Hassan]

I mean, we're talking about Epstein right now. I mean, Bill Clinton isn't. Bill Clinton's in the book. Right. He's in the birthday book. Ghislaine was at all the family events, hanging out with Chelsea and rest. I mean, all of them gotta 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 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 down under your brother. Oh, 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, Biden, they all did good things and bad things. Move on. You gotta 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?

[DJ Envy]

What do you think about the mayor race in New York?

[Interviewer/Host]

Hold on. Before we get to that, what you said is so profound just now, and I'm gonna tell you why. 2016, that's exactly what Trump did. But Trump was also an outsider. We know nobody in the Democratic Party is gonna do that. I love a lot of these people. I love Governor Josh Perro. I like.

[Mehdi Hassan]

What's more, they all have red lines. They're not people that won't criticize. Yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

That's why it has to be somebody like a Jon Stewart.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

It has to be an outsider.

[Mehdi Hassan]

I agree.

[Interviewer/Host]

They're the only ones that's going to throw them under the bus.

[Mehdi Hassan]

I agree. Or outsider. Or kind of fresh blood to go back to a mum. Dani, who is within the party but has the guts to take on the establishment. I mean, Jon Stewart, obviously, you and I are big fans of Jon 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 Jon Stewart on stage throwing some fireworks and hand grenades in.

[DJ Envy]

Now, what do you think about the mayor race in New York City?

[Mehdi Hassan]

I think it's great. I'm loving it. I'm happy.

[DJ Envy]

Trump's about to. They say Trump's gonna pull in Adams, so it's a little easier.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Yeah. I mean, if you look at the polling that came out this week, if you add up Adams, Sliwa and Cuomo, they do have a marginal lead on Mamdani. Clearly, Mamdani is benefiting from a divided opposition. But I think that's very simplistic to suggest that all of the people who support those candidates would immediately go to another candid lot of people who support Adams and Sliwa, I'm sure, who look at Cuomo and be like, if our guy's not in the race, we're backing Mamdanya, we're staying at home. Right. This idea that Cuomo will automatically command support from the other guy. I mean, Zoran Mamdani 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 Lewa.

[Interviewer/Host]

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.

[Mehdi Hassan]

How's he saying it?

[Interviewer/Host]

He's just saying it.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Nah, he's saying in a way that resonates. He's saying, 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 100 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. 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 a career. But he, sorry.

[Interviewer/Host]

Why didn't his rap career work then? If he sold such, such a great. I do like messaging.

[Mehdi Hassan]

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.

[Interviewer/Host]

I think, you know, it's interesting because I always say progressives and liberals cannibalize themselves because they want purity.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Yep.

[Interviewer/Host]

And I see people getting upset with him because he was on Al Sharpton and he said he would, he would discourage the globalized into. How do you pronounce it?

[Mehdi Hassan]

Intifada.

[Interviewer/Host]

Intifada. Intifada. Phrase. And people are like, oh, see, he's already down. He's already, he's already, you know, Israel. It's just like you're in New York City. You need some Jewish people to vote for 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.

[Mehdi Hassan]

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 BS smear campaigns were not working right. You had the ADL's and the bill Ackmans 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 Mamdani, 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 an arrest warrant out from the icc. That's one choice. The other choice is Andrew Cuom, 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 Newark doesn't control foreign policy, if that is your big issue, there's no choice. Right. It's the guy who said you'll arrest Netanyahu versus the guy who said, I'll be Netanyahu's lawyer. There's no starker choice than that. But look, you're right. The problem is there's a lot of people in the activist class 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 be, you're genocidal. That's not at all what people mean by that. But I think you're right. The big picture, you're right. Like, 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.

[Interviewer/Host]

So knowing that, do you like his chances?

[Mehdi Hassan]

Yes. Okay. I do like his chances. And I wish, I wish if Slash when he wins, 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, Mamdani should run for president.

[Interviewer/Host]

I don't even know why we're even.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Entertaining that conversation, unfortunately, because he keeps saying it.

[Interviewer/Host]

If Donald Trump runs for a third term, it's over.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Matty, I know.

[Interviewer/Host]

Like, I know not going to be a free and fair election.

[Mehdi Hassan]

I know we would be fooled. Even I don't think there will be an election. He wouldn't run an election. He would simply cancel election saying national emergency. He's already floated this. You saw him sitting with Zelensky saying, 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 elect. 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.

[Interviewer/Host]

Do you believe in Democrats moving forward?

[Mehdi Hassan]

The big D, Democratic Party, yes.

[Podcast Advertiser/Announcer]

The whole.

[Interviewer/Host]

I haven't.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Not under the leadership of the current folks, no. I've openly said that Hakeem Jeffries in China. Schumer should go. They need to stand down. They are not as you. As you called him. Aipac Shakur is not the man for this moment. They are ludicrous in their interventions. They both keep saying, ooh, we need a strongly worded letter. This is not. I'm not even making that up. That's not me being sarcastic. They've literally on the record saying, the AG of D.C. did a really good letter. Chuck Schumer's 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 only have two parties, so the opposition party has to do the fighting for us. These people don't fight. Nobody believes that. Chuck Schumann, Hakeem Jeffries are fighters. But there are the Democrats who can, just as you say, they're too scared to challenge.

[Podcast Host]

Who are the people that become, like, the Voice or like the. You know, like, you have, like, people that you point to that.

[Mehdi Hassan]

That do have a fight.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, they do have the fight.

[Mehdi Hassan]

There are Democrats who fight. But who?

[Podcast Host]

So if I. I mean, there are.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Obvious people like the AOCs of this world, the Ilhan Omas, the Rashida Talaves, and the squad who. Who are very outspoken. But there are other people. There's. Jasmine Crockett's got a big following now. She's been very outspoken from Texas in the Senate. There's people like Chris Van Holland of Maryland, who went to El Salvador when apparently Hakeem Jeffries was telling Democrats, don't go to El Salvador. It's unpopular issue. Chris Van Hollen went to El Salvador and got Kilmar Abrego Garcia back He came back because of people like Chris Van Hollen going out there and picking that fight. 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. Chuck Schumer lost the Senate. He should have resigned the next day. You lose an election, you should stand out. 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. We have a gerontocracy in this country. We have a bunch of old people who do not want to give up powered in.

[Podcast Host]

They won't give up power.

[Interviewer/Host]

How detrimental do you think it's going to be if Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries just refused to endorse Mondani and then, like, he loses? How detrimental you think it's going to be to him?

[Mehdi Hassan]

And the whole, oh, it would be so bad. It will be so bad. I mean, AOC made this point this week and I've made this point before. Hakeem Jeffries 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 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've 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 fascists. 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, no, 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 Gillibrand and Hochul and Jeffries 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 about 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 gonna 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 gonna hold hearings? Is he gonna go after Trump's corruption? Is he gonna call? Is he gonna be an actual insurgent speaker? I don't think so.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah. I don't like people who say, well, just wait till I get in position. When I get in position, I'm gonna show you.

[Mehdi Hassan]

I'm gonna show you. Show me down. Show me down. Yeah. That's fundamentally it.

[Interviewer/Host]

In an era where misinformation spreads faster than facts, I know you gotta go, how do you balance.

[Mehdi Hassan]

How do you. Got 10 minutes?

[Interviewer/Host]

Okay. How do you balance calling out lies in real time without giving those lies more oxygen?

[Mehdi Hassan]

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 struggle 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 run. Like, Trump knows how to plant 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. All the studies show when you try and 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 cognitive psychologist, I think is his title at Berkeley, wrote a lot of books called Don't Think of an Elephant and other. So 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've 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. 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.

[Podcast Host]

But how impactful is that in reality? Because even if you do the sandwich, whatever outlet is going to grab what's in the middle, because that's what people, you know what I mean? Like that's what get people.

[Mehdi Hassan]

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. 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, 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, they are not coming to save you. Because fundamentally, a lot of their owners, a lot of the C suites, 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? Gaza is 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 journalists 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.

[Interviewer/Host]

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.

[Mehdi Hassan]

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. 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 a 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.

[Interviewer/Host]

And it was because you were speaking loudly about Gaza and what Israel was doing to Gaza.

[Mehdi Hassan]

You'd have to ask msnbc.

[Interviewer/Host]

No, you, you talk about, you did launch your own show, your own network. What's the name of it again? What has that experience taught you about independence, sustainability, and just the future of news media in general?

[Mehdi Hassan]

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, Touchwood. 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. 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. 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. And I think that's taught me that there is a huge. People say people are 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 in. That's why you're doing this show. That's why I'm doing what I do.

[Interviewer/Host]

All right, well, Mehdi Hassan, pick out.

[DJ Envy]

The book, Win Every Argument. The Art of Debating, Persuading and Public Speaking. And thank you for joining us.

[Interviewer/Host]

Go subscribe to the network.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Thank you so much. Zateo.com hey, don't be a stranger, man.

[Interviewer/Host]

Pull up anytime you want.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Whenever I'm in New York, I'll drop you a line. All right.

[DJ Envy]

It's Mehdi Hassan. It's the Breakfast Club. Good morning.

[Mehdi Hassan]

Hold up.

[Interviewer/Host]

Every day I wake up, wake your ass up. The Breakfast Club. Y' all finished or y' all done?

[Mehdi Hassan]

I just normally do straight stand up, but this is a bit different.

[Podcast Advertiser/Announcer]

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[Mehdi Hassan]

Does anyone know what show they've come to see? It's a story. It's about the scariest night of my life.

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[Mehdi Hassan]

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[Mehdi Hassan]

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[Interviewer/Host]

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[Interviewer/Host]

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[Mehdi Hassan]

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[Podcast Advertiser/Announcer]

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[Podcast Host]

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