Donald Trump is busy constructing a Saddam-worthy, Antoinette-approved ballroom addition to the White House. The Washington Post defended it in its editorial, initially omitting Jeff Bezos’s donation to the project. Even worse, CNN’s CEO reportedly urged staff to cut back on ballroom coverage after a visit to the White House.
“The ballroom story is a smaller story than Trump going to war with Venezuela or ending the Constitution,” Mehdi says. “But it is a kind of microcosm of just how the media… rolls over at the first sign of Donald Trump pushback.”
It’s not just bad coverage: pro-Trump billionaires like the Ellisons and the Murdochs control big media like CBS and TikTok – and next, possibly CNN and HBO, with the Trump administration reportedly pressuring Warner Brothers to sell to the Ellisons, too. (That’s why you should subscribe to independent media like Zeteo!)
So when it comes to stories bigger than the ballroom – the Epstein files, war with Venezuela – the media isn’t just compliant, it’s complicit. “What Donald Trump is doing with the media right now is classic Viktor Orban, is classic Narendra Modi,” Mehdi says.
‘Ask the Editor’ is Mehdi’s weekly livestreamed Q&A where Zeteo subscribers can join the conversation on Substack and YouTube. In this episode, Zeteo’s Asawin Suebsaeng moderated the conversation.
Watch the full video above to hear Mehdi discuss ICE’s “Israel-first” arrest of Sami Hamdi, debunk Trump’s “bullshit” anti-war image, talk Zohran Mamdani and Islamophobia, and explain how this administration has made Mehdi into “a conspiracy theorist.” Well, not quite.
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