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In Part Two of Mehdi’s interview with Joe Walsh, the former Republican congressman turned Never-Trumper, Mehdi challenges Walsh on his support for Israel’s war on Gaza. 

Mehdi presses Walsh on his use of the term “genocide” to describe Russia’s attack on Ukraine but his refusal to apply it to Israel’s attack on Gaza; on his smearing of the International Criminal Court for having “anti-israel bias”; and on his refusal to condemn Israel’s mass displacement of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, not just Gaza. 

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Former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh was once a proud ally of the right-wing Tea Party – the movement that many believe paved the way for Donald Trump. But today, Walsh is no fan of Trump. In fact, he’s become one of the most vocal ‘Never Trump’ Republicans and is now officially an independent.

In this first of a two-part interview, Mehdi and the former Congressman discuss the fallout from Trump term two so far, the Democrats' failure to fully push back against him, and whether the US is heading towards civil war.

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New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ days seem to be numbered as he faces mounting pressure – from New Yorkers and beyond – to resign. The embattled mayor had faced charges related to bribery, campaign finance violations, and conspiracy offenses - until that is, the Trump DOJ stopped the charges against Adams just two months before his trial, in return for the mayor’s support for the administration’s immigration policies.

Adams has denied the charges and stated that he will serve his full term, despite the national outrage, but one man is ready to step up if needed: New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams – the first in line to succeed Adams and become acting mayor.

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Award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad has just released his first non-fiction book titled One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. The book’s title, inspired by a viral tweet Akkad posted in October of 2023, gives you a good hint that the main theme is the genocide in Gaza. Akkad joins ‘Mehdi Unfiltered’ to discuss the many themes in his book, what inspired it, and why so many are silent when they shouldn’t be.

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Indian Author Pankaj Mishra has spent much of the past year advocating against Israel’s war on Gaza, and has now even gone as far as to write a whole book on the subject – The World After Gaza: A History. The book is of course inspired by Mishra’s London Review essay and lecture, ‘The Shoah After Gaza’ – which drew up controversy last year, after the Barbican backed out of hosting Mishra’s lecture, all before he even gave it.

Hear Mishra discuss the implications of Israel’s impunity, US President Donald Trump’s re-election, and his spats with far-right writers Jordan Peterson and Niall Ferguson, as well as parallels between the state of Israel and his home country of India, specifically in relation to what India is doing in Kashmir.

Click here to buy a copy of Mishra’s book, ‘The World After Gaza: A History.’

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Donald Trump hasn’t even been in office for a month, and already, his administration is dismantling key agencies of the federal government, including USAID. Much of this work is being done by shadow president Elon Musk, whose so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been wreaking havoc on key systems at the Treasury, the Department of Education, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. If DOGE really plans on cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget, there’s one place progressives say he can start: the Pentagon’s whopping $850 billion budget.

Ben Cohen, progressive activist and co-founder of the ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s and Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist who served in Trump’s first-term State Department join Mehdi to discuss.

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Last week, Democratic Congresswoman and ‘Squad’ member Ilhan Omar became Elon Musk’s latest target on Twitter, after he falsely accused her of breaking the law for sharing legal advice to undocumented immigrants.

In this interview on ‘Mehdi Unfiltered,’ Rep. Omar sits down with Mehdi to discuss Musk’s attack on her, the ongoing effort to dismantle federal agencies funded by Congress, the need for the Democratic Party to get more aggressive and use the leverage it has and Trump’s plan for the US to illegally take control of Gaza among other topics.

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Last week, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order freezing US aid to South Africa, saying that their new land ownership law – meant to address the legacy of apartheid – “blatantly discriminates against ethnic minority Afrikaners.” This came just days after Elon Musk railed against the law on Twitter, calling it “openly racist.”

In this interview, South Africa’s Ambassador to the US Ebrahim Rasool sits down with Mehdi to discuss the new law, Trump and Musk’s decision to “interfere” with South Africa’s internal politics, and the country’s ICJ case against Israel, which the Trump administration cited as one of the reasons for freezing aid to South Africa.

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Do you ever wonder where the world will be in 50 years?

This is the key question that award-winning filmmaker Asif Kapadia – best known for his films ‘Diego Maradona’, ‘Amy’ and ‘Senna’ – seeks to answer in his newest work, ‘2073.’ And the answer is a lot scarier than perhaps the flying cars we imagined for the future.

‘2073’ gives us a look at just one of the possibilities if the world continues to devolve at its current pace. A world almost unrecognizable as citizens of ‘New San Francisco’ face the fall of democracy and the harrowing effects of climate change. (Be sure to watch the exclusive clip from the film at the end of the interview above.)

“I thought the whole world feels really dystopian – everything that happens every day that I read, everything I see happening around me – and I thought, how do I express this feeling, this fear about where we're heading?” Kapadia tells Mehdi.

He continues, “My main aim with this film was to kind of almost have a God's eye view of the whole world. Because my background is from India, I've worked in Brazil, I've worked in Europe, I live in the UK, I've worked in the US. I just saw the same kind of elements, the same playbook happening everywhere.”

Thus, ‘2073’ depicts the confluence of climate change and the rise of authoritarianism in the dystopian city of New San Francisco, where there’s no privacy, no freedom, no democracy. The film is a warning of what is to come if we let oligarchs go unchecked.

But it’s not all doom and gloom, because as much as ‘2073’ serves as a warning, it also is a call to action.

“The film is there to create a dialogue for us to be talking now, for you, for me, for everyone to be saying, what can we individually do? I don't think it's as simple as putting a neat little moment at the end of the film and saying, if you do this, everything will be great. I mean, the struggle is much more complex and the fight for freedom and democracy is much more layered than me just saying go out and vote. There's something else going on here and we're going to have to talk about it,” Kapadia explains.

He concludes, “I think partly it starts at home. It starts with you, starts with your kids, it starts with your family, your parents, your aunties and uncles, but then also a kind of wider community about what are we going to do to protect ourselves from what is happening. We're not crazy. This stuff is happening. And I think the film, part of the process of showing it, has been almost therapy for people.”

Watch the full interview above to hear what Kapadia’s take is on the mainstream media’s coverage of the issues he highlights in ‘2073’, and the exclusive clip, only for Zeteo paid subscribers

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In this week’s episode of Mehdi Unfiltered, Mehdi is joined by award-winning British journalist and broadcaster Rachel Shabi to discuss her new book Off-White: The Truth About Antisemitism, the conditionality of whiteness for Jewish people, and why progressives need to establish their own trustworthiness when speaking out against antisemitism.

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