Mehdi Hasan gets MSNBC Sunday prime-time show

MSNBC is giving journalist Mehdi Hasan his own prime-time television show starting this Sunday, the Los Angeles Times reports. Hasan’s first guest will be Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

Hasan will continue hosting his nightly news and opinion program on the NBCUniversal streaming service Peacock, called “The Mehdi Hasan Show,” which debuted last October. Hasan also announced the news on Twitter earlier Thursday.

Some personal news.

The @MehdiHasanShow is heading for @MSNBC.

I’ll be hosting my nightly show not only on @peacockTV but also hosting it on @MSNBC every Sunday night, live from 8pm Eastern.

Do please tune in, starting this Sunday, Feb 28th.

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) February 25, 2021

Hasan is a former journalist for Al Jazeera, where he hosted the show “UpFront.” He has also been a senior columnist for The Intercept and the host of that outlet’s podcast “Deconstructed.”

Known for his direct and sometimes confrontational interview style, Hasan has also been unafraid to engage in public disputes with politicians and other journalists on social media. 

In December, Hasan took to Twitter to condemn a tweet by Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer as “racist.” Via his tweet, Hammer had shared a clip of Hasan’s show along with the comment, “Your Qatari $$$ at work.” The clip showed Hasan discussing Palestinian-Israeli relations and Israel’s “de facto,” as he described it, annexation of the occupied territories. 

In July of 2019, Hasan asked Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — also via Twitter — to delete a tweet Rubio had made that included another clip of a Hasan interview, this one with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). Hasan said the clip had been “selectively-edited.”