Glenn Greenwald on X

One thing Mehdi specialized in was smearing opponents of the Dem Party as racists, bigots, anti-Semites, etc. That got him a lot of social media love. But inside corporate media, you can only step out of line -- as he did on Israel -- if you're a star with a huge audience.

For sure Mehdi conducted good, hard-hitting interviews with some people. Credit to him for that, and for his willingness to be so off-key on Israel/Gaza. But Comcast doesn't care about Twitter popularity, only ratings. Mehdi had none, so he had no latitude to step out of line.

Even cable stars with massive, loyal audiences have real limits: Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson were all fired, the latter two due in part to the dissident views they expressed. But if you have no audience, as was true of Mehdi, only lukewarm subservience works.