'Zeteo Is a Pathetic Fake News Blog,' Says an Angry Trump White House
Trump officials regularly trash us for reporting on the president and holding him to account. We’re not going to stop – but we need your help to keep going and standing up for truth and facts.
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At the beginning of this month, we pissed off the Trump White House.
Again.
We ran a story on how President Donald Trump is already planning to steal classified U.S. documents after he leaves office a second time – just like he did the first time. The West Wing got huffy about it.
“Zeteo is a pathetic fake news blog and their so-called sources have no idea what they’re talking about. Zeteo’s three readers already know this ‘publication’ is total fake news,” the White House told us in an email. No one signed their name. (If you read their statement closely, you’ll notice they did not deny any of our reporting… 🤣🤣🤣)
The federal government is waging a nonstop war on the First Amendment in ways that we haven’t seen in the United States in a long, long time. On top of that, senior White House officials constantly hurl childish taunts and bullshit smears at news organizations that shine a light on what this corrupt, out-of-his-mind president actually does.
Their enemies list includes Zeteo.
The Trump White House has publicly denounced us as “terrorist sympathizers,” because we’ve reported on the scandals and lies they’ve told about their disastrous war on Iran. Vice President JD Vance went out of his way to call our founder and editor-in-chief, Mehdi Hasan, a “dummy.” A White House spokesperson called Mehdi a “nutjob” and “such a terrible ‘journalist’” after Zeteo broke news about Trump’s push to spy more, not on foreign adversaries, but on U.S. allies.
Top MAGA ally and the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has been paying attention to what Mehdi and Zeteo have been doing too and… he doesn’t approve! Trump’s “rapid response” team dubbed Mehdi a terrorist-loving “moron,” simply because he called out the White House press secretary’s bald-faced lies. The White House previously branded Zeteo “a fake news blogsite run by left-wing hacks that no one should take seriously.” (They threw that particular hissy fit because we dared to report on Trump and the GOP’s ongoing plots to steal elections.) And I will forever cherish the fact that the Trump White House issued a statement labeling yours truly a “deranged hack who couldn’t even hold a job at Rolling Stone and is now writing for a Greta Thunberg blog.” Despite all of their attacks, the Trump White House, perhaps nursing some hurt feelings, has pretended not to know who we are, emailing us, “What the hell is a Zeteo?” That was after we reached out for comment regarding one of President Trump’s massive, failing leak hunts.
They know what we are. And they’re going to keep knowing.
I’ve been a political reporter at multiple mainstream media outlets, including the Daily Beast and Rolling Stone, and I can honestly say that I’ve never been prouder of the work I’ve done than when it’s here with the hard-charging team at Zeteo. You can tell a lot about someone from their enemies. Clearly, Zeteo is getting under Team Trump’s skin; we wouldn’t be doing our jobs right if we weren’t.
But, as always, the only way we can fight back is together.
So if you’re able to, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to Zeteo today to support us and help grow independent media. If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you! You can still help us by making a donation to Zeteo.
Every paid subscription, every donation, every financial contribution, big or small, sends a message to Donald Trump’s authoritarian, warmongering administration and his party – that we won’t allow ourselves to be bullied, we won’t be silenced, and we won’t stop telling the truth about fascism, genocide, illegal wars, the Republican Party’s widespread efforts to attack free and fair elections, and other moral and literal atrocities of our time.
Please help us fight on. Thank you for standing with Zeteo.
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When I was growing up, I was told by reasonable adults that if someone you're talking to, or about, resorts to name calling, personal insults and raises their voice, it means they've lost the conversation. I do believe this to be true.