Zaid Jilani
Anti-tribal, evidence-first commentary across the divide.
Freelance journalist who previously reported for ThinkProgress, AlterNet, The Intercept, and NewsNation. He writes the Substack newsletter 'The American Saga' from an anti-partisan, heterodox center-left perspective and contributes to outlets including Tablet, New Lines, and The Dispatch. He is known for cross-ideological media criticism.
Latest posts
Egged on by the Paxton campaign and Trump officials, rightwing media invented a wild lie about James Talarico, spreading to millions. The conservative media ecosystem is badly broken, with a constellation of grifters making bank on a geriatric audience: https://t.co/03QBrqwnk0
15d ago · 23 likes
The Clinton camp invented the “Bernie Bros” thing to smear all of Bernie’s supporters as sexist pigs while simultaneously retaining a key friend of Epstein, Larry Summers.
11mo ago · 4,169 likes
For years the political right was obsessed with childhood purity and elaborate fake scandals like PizzaGate and Qanon and now we got the actual president of the United States being best buds with a notorious child trafficker and…theyvjust lost interest?
11mo ago · 4,855 likes
Why is Trump simultaneously murdering people on small boats whose identities we don’t really know (but he insists they’re drug smugglers) while also freeing people we *know* are guilty of drug crimes?
11mo ago · 61,791 likes
The strongest case
Partisan media distort facts to fit tribal narratives; independent, evidence-first reporting that refuses to pick a side best serves the public and helps de-escalate polarization.
And against
His contrarian stance against 'both camps' can read as heterodox for its own sake, and freelancing outside an institutional newsroom reduces the external editorial and fact-check friction on his work.
How to support
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On the record: no documented legal record found in a primary source.