Mehdi Hasan – who has tweeted 167,300 times since April 2010, or 33 times a day for 14 years, in a tone that tends towards righteous and accusatory – is more agreeable in person than you might expect. His combativeness is more puckish than caustic. We met in April in Washington DC, where he has worked since 2015, to walk the Mall, from the Capitol to the Washington Monument. We argued for an hour.
Hasan is the frontman and CEO of Zeteo, one of the most successful new media companies in the US, which he set up after losing his weekly prime-time show at the cable news network MSNBC in December. His trenchant views on Gaza may have lost him his job, but he could not discuss the terms of his departure. To fund Zeteo, Hasan raised $4m from Muslim-American businessmen whose identities he did not want to divulge (“You associate with me, and the Donald Trump Juniors of the world come for you”). The site’s success has been remarkable: it has generated an estimated $2m in revenue from 25,000 paid subscribers since it launched on 27 February.
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