According to The Washington Free Beacon, the venue is the historic Howard Theatre, but the atmosphere is closer to a group therapy session for displaced media personalities and their most ardent fans than to a serious political forum. The draw is Zeteo, the left-wing digital venture launched by Mehdi Hasan after his unceremonious exit from the network formerly known as MSNBC over anti-Semitism, now staging a live event to mark the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office.
Joining Hasan on stage are two other casualties of the cable news ecosystem—Joy Reid, formerly of MSNBC, and Jim Acosta, formerly of CNN—each now recast as a martyr of “independent media” rather than as a partisan pundit who wore out his welcome.
The contrast with Acosta’s own ill-fated “Fire Within Tour” a year earlier is noticeable but not transformative. Then, he had promised an evening of “fueling courage” and “igniting truth,” only to deliver a string of stale one-liners and a Zoom cameo from Rosie O’Donnell, who insisted the 2024 election was rigged, leaving even sympathetic attendees with a sense of anticlimax.
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Tonight’s proceedings are marginally more polished, but the underlying tone remains one of embittered self-importance. Zeteo, named after an ancient Greek term for “getting to the bottom of things,” aspires to a lofty, quasi-philosophical brand identity—the pretentious cousin of Acosta’s earlier promise to “ignite truth.” The audience, having paid for the privilege, appears to be seeking precisely this kind of ideological reassurance, a curated “truth therapy” in a media landscape they now deem insufficiently radical.
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For these attendees, the mainstream outlets they once revered—CNN, MSNBC, and certainly CBS—have become suspect, even traitorous. The networks are castigated as too “right-wing,” too critical of Hamas, too willing to platform voices that do not conform to the hard-left narrative on Israel and Gaza. The Democratic Party, in their telling, is no better: a hollowed-out institution allegedly run by “corporate sellouts, Zionist shills, and conniving anti-communists who refuse to fight,” a far cry from the party of responsible governance or even mainstream liberalism.
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On stage, Hasan, Reid, and Acosta present themselves as liberated dissidents rather than as former cable personalities who pushed their networks past the breaking point. They are now self-styled #Resistance bloggers, the vanguard of “independent media,” and they treat their dismissals as a kind of perverse blessing. The dynamic is familiar to anyone who has encountered adolescent rebellion: a “Screw you, we’re starting our own club” posture, complete with mutual flattery and endless cross-promotion on one another’s podcasts.
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Their conversations, both online and in this live format, revolve around a single, endlessly recycled premise: “Can you f—ing believe what Trump just f—ing did?” The answer, invariably, is yes—and they can scarcely believe their own courage in saying so. They agree on virtually everything, especially on the supposed heroism of their own commentary, and they speak as if their presence on stage constitutes an act of personal risk. Their devotion to “zeteo,” as they style it, is framed as a near-sacred calling.
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The evening begins with Prem Thakker, Zeteo’s political correspondent, who sets the tone by emphasizing the exclusivity of the gathering. This is an “exclusive event,” he reminds the crowd, and while photos are permitted, anyone caught recording video will be summarily ejected by security, an odd stance for self-proclaimed champions of transparency.
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Thakker then offers a more emotional rationale for the event: “I know many of us here share this sense of grief, of the things we've lost, thousands of Palestinians who have been killed,” he says. “And so I want you to know today that there's space for all that grief and frustration and anger and love and joy and laughter.”
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With that, the headliners dive in, congratulating one another for being “ex-cable news” and thus, in their telling, finally free to speak without constraint. They boast that they can now say whatever they wish without fear of reprimand: Mehdi Hasan can rail against what he portrays as a Zionist cabal, Joy Reid can smear sports commentator Stephen A. Smith as a “money-grubbing Uncle Tom,” and Jim Acosta can lament the supposed “nightmare” of dining out in Washington, D.C., only to encounter Republicans in the same restaurant. Acosta recounts, with evident bitterness, the “horrors” of covering Trump’s first term, including the indignity of being told by a White House aide that he was banned from bowling night.
Acosta describes his exile from cable news in quasi-spiritual terms. “It's like being liberated and naked all at the same time,” he says of being banned from the networks that once made him a household name. He adds, “You know, honestly, in this moment I've been, you know, I've been calling it a fucking moment, because if we're not going to use that kind of language now, when are we going to use it?” The profanity is presented as evidence of authenticity and bravery, though it mostly underscores the performative nature of the evening.
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Reid, for her part, insists that their mission is pure. “Our interest is just to get the truth to the people in its unvarnished and unfiltered form,” she declares. The trio agrees that legacy media outlets are now “too nice” to Trump and no longer “free,” a claim that would surprise many conservatives who recall years of relentless anti-Trump coverage. Their particular ire is reserved for CBS News under Bari Weiss and for CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil, a former MSNBC reporter married to current MSNBC host Katy Tur, whom they portray as emblematic of a centrist betrayal. “I'm less worried about Walter Cronkite spinning in his grave than him coming back from the dead and punching Tony [Dokoupil] in the face,” Acosta quips, in what passes here for “unvarnished” commentary.
Reid unleashes a more personal attack on Weiss, who became editor in chief of CBS News in October. “The Bari Weisses of the world, who've been sitting around as failures in a New York Times newsroom and left in a huff because people couldn't stand her and she hates diversity, equity, and inclusion,” she vents. “Everyone sees that she's just rewarded for mediocrity, for failure, and for sucking up.” The irony of denouncing “mediocrity” from a stage populated by three pundits dismissed by their own networks is left unexamined.
Hasan readily concurs, pivoting to a broader indictment of his political foes. “Thank God our fascists are so dumb,” he riffs, to approving laughter. From there, the panel shifts to another “truth” they believe the mainstream media has failed to confront: the alleged “genocide” in Gaza, which they insist has been insufficiently condemned. The conversation soon narrows to personal attacks, including on CNN conservative commentator Scott Jennings, whose clips often outperform the network’s own broadcasts online.
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Jennings, they suggest, is prematurely aged by his own dishonesty. His soul, they imply, has been worn down by the “bullshit” he supposedly peddles. “If Scott Jennings worked for me, I'd fire his ass,” Acosta sneers, prompting the audience to erupt in “clapter”—applause not for wit or insight, but for ideological alignment.
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Yet Acosta also indulges in a kind of wistful nostalgia for the very media establishment he now derides. “There was a time, I think, that all of the cable networks where you know you had to tell the truth,” he says. “I mean, you can have an opinion, but you had to tell the truth, and you had to do it in a respectful way.” The remark is delivered without irony, despite the panel’s own record of partisan excess and the evening’s steady stream of invective.
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Hasan repeatedly attempts to steer the discussion back to what he portrays as Jewish malevolence and Western complicity, returning to the theme of Gaza and the alleged “genocide” there. After a round of denunciations, the panel opens the floor to questions. One woman asks whether denouncing Israel will become a “litmus test” in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary, a prospect the panelists warmly endorse. When names like Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris are floated as potential candidates, the audience responds with boos, signaling a desire for someone even further to the left.
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By the close of the Q&A, Hasan and his guests have largely satisfied the crowd by sketching a future Democratic nominee who would support cutting aid to Israel, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, packing the Supreme Court, and nationalizing the health care system. Engaging with Republicans, they insist, is pointless. Hasan dismisses nearly all GOP politicians as “unabashed racist, white supremacist, fascist Nazis,” a sweeping slur that reveals more about the speaker’s extremism than about the actual ideological diversity within the Republican Party.
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The evening’s next act is Rep. Ro Khanna of California, a progressive Democrat who clearly appeals to this audience and is widely seen as a likely 2028 presidential contender. The loudest cheer of the night comes when Hasan asks Khanna about his call for new leadership to replace Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer.
Another roar follows when Hasan presses whether House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries should also step aside, a question that underscores the crowd’s impatience with even mainstream liberal leadership.
Khanna sidesteps the invitation to directly depose his party’s top brass and instead pivots to a more punitive vision of political accountability. “We should be keeping a list of every person in this administration who has broken the law, who has violated the law, and they need to be held accountable and they need to be prosecuted,” Khanna says.
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“That is not vengeance. That is not retribution. That is upholding constitutional democracy.” The audience responds enthusiastically, though some appear disappointed when Khanna stops short of calling for the imprisonment of Merrick Garland, the attorney general under former president Joe Biden, whom the far left now views as insufficiently aggressive.
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Medea Benjamin, the longtime activist and cofounder of Code Pink, steps to the microphone next and is greeted with warm applause. She presses Khanna on when Democrats will stop, as she puts it, “faffing around” and begin traveling to Palestine to engage in “civil disobedience,” effectively urging elected officials to stage performative protests abroad. Khanna replies that he is “certainly open” to the idea, though his tone and body language suggest a more cautious calculation, likely informed by the political risks of such theatrics.
As the event winds down, Hasan offers Khanna well wishes for his political future but makes clear his skepticism about the congressman’s national prospects. “We live in a very racist country right now,” he says, framing Khanna’s potential presidential ambitions as a near-impossible climb in a nation he portrays as structurally hostile to nonwhite candidates, despite recent history to the contrary.
The remark encapsulates the evening’s broader narrative: a worldview in which America is irredeemably bigoted, Republicans are “fascist Nazis,” and even mainstream Democrats are little more than collaborators.
For conservatives observing this spectacle from the outside, the Zeteo event offers a revealing snapshot of a left increasingly cocooned in its own echo chamber, where dissenting views are not debated but anathematized. The panelists’ contempt for traditional institutions—from Congress to the courts to the press—sits uneasily alongside their insistence that they alone are defending “constitutional democracy.”
Their calls to prosecute political opponents, to purge party leadership, to delegitimize Israel, and to nationalize vast swaths of the economy underscore just how far their vision diverges from the principles of limited government, individual liberty, and constitutional restraint.
What emerges from the Howard Theatre is not a movement interested in persuasion or pluralism, but one that thrives on moral absolutism and perpetual grievance. The attendees leave with their anger validated and their ideological certainties reinforced, while the speakers depart with their brands burnished and their subscriber bases presumably expanded.
For a political left that once prided itself on defending civil liberties and open debate, the spectacle of cheering crowds endorsing lists of political enemies to be prosecuted and institutions to be packed or dismantled is a sobering reminder of how quickly “resistance” rhetoric can slide into something far more illiberal.
