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Good morning. Mehdi here, filing this newsletter from DC before I head over to the UK for the official launch of Zeteo UK at the Barbican in London on Monday evening.
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ I take on double standards from Democrats who pretend to care about racism but suddenly lose their voices when it’s the likes of Elon Musk or Laura Loomer. And Swin reports from the insane GOP midterm convention in Dallas, where Trump made the crowd take a personal, raised-hand pledge of allegiance to… him. Plus Zeteo continues to mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11 today with a range of special coverage that you won’t get elsewhere.
Democrats Say They Can’t Stand Bigotry, Unless It’s From These Bigots
There is never any kind of excuse for calling a Black man a “monkey” or an “errand boy,” whether for AIPAC or anyone else. So I was glad to see my friend, the Palestinian-Italian journalist and Zeteo contributor Rula Jebreal, apologize for (wrongly, inexcusably) using these long-standing racist tropes while (rightly, understandably) attacking House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries’s support for genocide in Gaza and ongoing embrace of AIPAC. Such tropes have a long and grotesque history when it comes to Black people in the United States, and they have no place in our political discourse.
Rula offered an unconditional apology for her racist language, in print and on air. Anyone who knows Rula, and what she stands for, knows she is not a racist or bigot herself. Not only is she a principled progressive and a member of the Afro-Palestinian community, whose father was born in Nigeria, but she herself has been subjected to decades of racist, anti-Black abuse and threats from the Italian far right.
And yet, despite her intent not being racist and despite her apology being immediate, for the past week top Democrats have gone out of their way to denounce and disavow her – from DNC chair Ken Martin to House Minority Whip Katherine Clark to multiple members of Congress to prominent Democratic Party pundits.
This comes off the back of relentless attacks from top Democrats on Hasan Piker, a Twitch streamer from California who holds no elected position and no formal role on any Democratic election campaigns.
In these cases, the message from top Democrats has been loud, instant, and unmistakable: racist, antisemitic, anti-Black rhetoric is unacceptable, and those who engage in it must be held to account
Fine. Agreed. Good.
But is that actually their standard? Because, if so, the question is: where is this energy when the offender is on the right?
When Republican politicians, donors, and activists – people with actual power and influence, titles, and positions – make far more racist remarks, with far more venom and viciousness, and without issuing any kind of apology, regret, or remorse, top Democrats are AWOL.
Take just the past couple of weeks: