Mehdi and Zeteo concluded our one-year anniversary tour last week, with a final stop in the city that has made headlines in recent days and weeks, after the Trump administration deployed the National Guard against protesters. Yes, Los Angeles.
“If it was happening in another country… We would not hesitate for a single second to call it autocracy, authoritarianism, or a dictatorship,” political commentator and YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen tells the audience.
In this special live recording, Mehdi sits down with Cohen, as well as LA City Council member Nithya Raman and “Higher Learning” co-host Van Lathan for a conversation on President Donald Trump’s targeting of LA protesters and immigrants, Democrats’ response, and the media’s handling of Trump 2.0.
“There is an incredible amount of fear right now,” Raman tells Mehdi. “They're [ICE] showing up at workplaces. They're showing on street corners. They're showing up taking street vendors who are selling outside of a Home Depot… They showed up outside of an elder care facility in Santa Monica and took workers from there. I mean these are kidnappings.”
Cohen explains why he believes Democrats are failing to respond to Trump’s far-right agenda in a meaningful way.
“I feel like for so long we have been the Dick Durbin party of impotence on the left,” Cohen tells Mehdi. “For so long, it has felt like Democrats are there to protect the processes of government as opposed to being there to serve people, to make sure that we have healthcare protected, climate change combated, that gun violence is reduced.”
Mehdi asks Lathan, who frequently appears on CNN, about whether he believes the media is meeting the moment right now when it comes to covering Trump’s second term.
“The legacy media right now is made to serve a commercial break,” Van says to Mehdi. “‘I'm mad on the left,’ ‘I'm on the right,’ ‘I am the host, you two stop fighting! We'll be right back,’ ‘Proctor & Gamble.’”
“We're not living in those times anymore. We're living in times of kidnappings and gulag… Everybody wearing a suit and tie, getting all that makeup that breaks my skin out on your face, we have to meet the moment,” Lathan says.
Paid subscribers can watch the full conversation above to hear the panel also take questions from the audience and discuss California Governor Gavin Newsom as well as the future of the Democratic party.
Free subscribers can watch a 5-minute preview. Consider upgrading today to unlock more content from Zeteo.
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