Journalism Without Justice: Jonathan Chait & the Collapse of Media Integrity
From Iraq to Trump to Gaza, America’s pundit class has perfected the art of being wrong and profiting from it. It’s long past time we hold them accountable.
Jonathan Chait has built a career out of being on the wrong side of history.
And this week, he decided to direct his propaganda toward me. For decades, corporate journalists like Chait have been complicit in the unraveling of our democracy, the erosion of global peace, and the rise of fascist autocracy.
And rather than showing the humility to pause, listen, and learn from those doing the real work on the ground, people like Chait continue to pontificate from the safety of their columns—so long as it earns them more clicks, more book deals, and more self-congratulation. Truth, nuance, and integrity are always the first casualties.
I’m writing this piece because these so-called thought leaders have caused incalculable harm to our public discourse and our collective moral compass. They have distorted reality to serve the powerful, disguised propaganda as journalism, and gaslit the public into submission. It’s long past time they were held accountable—not through mere outrage, but through rigorous, intellectual dismantling of their hypocrisy.
Let’s Address This.
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Opening Notes
For claiming “The progressive left makes its case for refusing to compromise with the electorate,” Chait doesn’t actually name what we should compromise on? Is it giving up on universal healthcare that more than 70% of Americans want? Giving up on ending genocide in Gaza which more than 92% of Democrats want? Giving up on protecting abortion access which more than 96% of Democrats want?
This article has two parts.
Part 1 documents why opinions from people like Chait are not worth the pixels used to project them on your phone screen. And I hope those of you who still subscribe to legacy media, cancel those subscriptions, and instead subscribe to resources like my human rights newsletter—a platform committed to informing the public, demanding justice, and upholding human rights. Moreover, outlets like ProPublica, The Appeal, The Mississippi Free Press, the Equal Justice Initiative, and many more like them show how journalism is done.
Part 2 tackles the specific allegations Chait levies towards me, and indeed towards most all progressives. As you’ve come to expect from me, I bring receipts to separate fact from fiction and demonstrate just how detached Chait’s allegations are from reality. Let’s dive in.
Part 1: A History of Propaganda
If Jonathan Chait is good at one thing, it’s being on the wrong side of history, and with deadly consequences. This isn’t hyperbole.
Supporting The Illegal Iraq War
For example, in 2003, Chait ignored all the evidence and proudly supported the illegal invasion of Iraq. The Bush administration proffered no actual evidence for their claims of WMDs. Adding to the absurdity, George Bush claimed the war was a “Crusade” “God told him” to wage. Millions of Americans marched in the streets opposing the Bush Doctrine of preemptive attack. Yet, the invasion proceeded, in significant part, because journalists like Chait failed to hold power accountable, and instead greased the wheels of fascism. The horrific atrocity Chait championed destroyed Iraq, killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, killed thousands of American soldiers, and wasted trillions of dollars—all built on a lie. A lie that Jonathan Chait shamelessly supported. But he wasn’t done yet.
Claiming Trump Will Be “Good” For America
In 2016, as every person committed to justice warned that Trump would hasten fascism in America, Jonathan Chait shockingly argued “Liberals should support a Trump nomination,” proclaiming:
The GOP is a machine that harnesses ethno-nationalistic fear. A Trump nomination might upend his party. A Trump presidency would probably wind up doing less harm to the country than a Marco Rubio or a Cruz presidency. It might even, possibly, do some good. Trump is only playing a character. The truly dangerous Republicans are the ones who believe their own dialogue.
It is truly fascinating that Chait was wrong on literally everything. But what’s even worse, none of what Trump has done since becoming President is a surprise. Chait wrote the above after Trump was credibly accused of sexually abusing dozens of women, after his history of racism against Black and brown people, after his antisemitic comments and fraternizing with white supremacists, after he announced his plan to ban Muslim immigrants, and after his proposal to have a registry to track American Muslims, similar to how Jews were tracked in Nazi Germany. Knowing all this, Jonathan Chait decided Trump “might even do some good” to America. As you watch ICE fascists take down 79 year old U.S. citizens, the U.S. military occupy our cities, farmers lose everything they’ve worked for due to tariffs, measles outbreaks in numerous states, and South Korean workers arbitrarily arrested and tortured, please know that Jonathan Chait predicted and argued Trump would be “good for America.”
Silence On Israel’s Genocide On Gaza
And now in 2025, Chait’s position on Israel and genocide is a head scratcher. First, yes Chait rightly rejects the claim that criticism of the State of Israel is antisemitic. I give him due credit for this principled and correct stance. But then, strangely, Chait ignores all the evidence and refuses to condemn the genocide in Gaza. Despite near unanimous verdicts from global genocide scholars, including numerous Israeli Jewish scholars like Omar Bartov, Jewish human rights orgs like B’TSalem, Amnesty International, the ICC, the ICJ, the United Nations—and hundreds more orgs—all of whom agree that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza against the Palestinian people—Chait has decided to ignore this genocide altogether.
This is who Jonathan Chait is. A man who supported the illegal Iraq invasion that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, a man who argued Donald Trump would be “good” for America even after he proclaimed his fascist ideologies, and a man who sits silent on a horrific genocide broadcast on our phones in real time every single day.
Which brings us to Part 2.
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Part 2: Remaining on the Wrong Side of History
Now, here’s the thing. If Chait were some ordinary person with bad opinions, it probably wouldn’t matter that he has the judgment of an unfaithful CEO at a Coldplay concert. But unfortunately, Jonathan Chait considers himself a journalist, and has spent the last three decades working in major legacy media to that effect. He has been afforded massive platforms like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, The New Republic, and most recently, The Atlantic.
And this week, Chait turned his poor judgment towards me, attacking me and my advocacy, in his Atlantic column. The difficulty I have in dismantling his absurdities is that in doing so, I’m giving him what he wants—attention.
But nonetheless, I write this not for him, but for you—the reader. I believe my fellow Americans deserve honesty and intellectual rigor on the issues that shape our lives. So rather than relying on commentators who mistake cynicism for insight, I invite you to trust writers and academics grounded in evidence, integrity, and logic.
A Panel Lecture In Military Occupied Washington D.C.
Last week I attended an event in Washington D.C., focused on the importance of effective messaging to the American people. I sat on a panel on the need to lean into progressive values because they are demonstrably popular and a more accurate reflection of what human rights require of us. Panelists on additional similar topics included Maryland U.S. Senator Christopher Van Hollen, California U.S. Congresswoman Lateefah Simon, Zeteo Founder and President Mehdi Hasan, Patriotic Millionaires Founder Erica Payne, Texas U.S. Congressman Greg Casar, and yes, Qasim Rashid.
Jonathan Chait also attended. And as you read Chait’s deeply problematic claims, and my fact based repudiations of his claims, you’ll see up close why trust in corporate media continues to plummet.
Last August, Chait said Harris needed to do everything possible to show she’s a centrist and to upset progressives. [see image below]
Marcetic continued:
Two months later, [Chait] said that’s exactly what she was doing and that it was working. [see image below]
Marcetic concluded:
Then [Harris] lost, so now [Chait] has to pretend the opposite happened. [see image below]
To summarize Marcetic—last year Chait argued and doubled down that the Democratic Party was firmly centrist and was winning on centrism. But since Harris lost in November, Chait now argues that loss is due to progressives. In other words, had Harris won, it would have been due to centrism, but because she lost, it is due to progressivism. This double speak is classic Jonathan Chait logic. And it permeates his attacks on me and fellow progressives.
Chait’s First Attack: Misrepresenting My Argument
Chait begins his piece as follows:
On a recent panel of progressive activists analyzing what went wrong in the 2024 election, the author, activist, and failed political candidate Qasim Rashid spoke with confidence about the way forward for the Democratic Party.
To be honest, being called a failed political candidate from someone who thinks “Trump is good for America” is something I take as a compliment. But I digress. Chait continues:
The problem, [Rashid] insisted, was not that Democrats had strayed too far from public opinion but that the party had grown too solicitous of it. “Saying the right thing timidly,” he proclaimed, “is less effective than saying the wrong thing loudly.”
This is a lie and misrepresentation. I literally argue the opposite—stating that the Democratic Party has in fact strayed too far from public opinion. I pointed out, for example, that 77% of Democratic Party voters wanted Biden, then Harris, to agree to stop arming Netanyahu—and the party refused—instead leaning into centrism. And that this hurt Harris at the polls (a fact she has since conceded).
As a result, an IMEU poll found that of the millions of voters who voted for Biden but stayed home for Harris, the number one reason—29%—was due to the Party’s refusal to listen to them on Gaza. Even something as critical as the economy was second at 24%.
I pointed out that more than 70% of Democrats want universal healthcare (including 57% of all Americans)—and the party refused. Instead, centrist Democratic politicians often take funding from the very same corrupt corporations like UnitedHealth that are exacerbating the healthcare crisis.
Moreover, my follow up point about speaking timidly versus loudly had nothing to do with the aforementioned points. If anything I thought Chait would give me credit for quoting Bill Clinton who, as Madeline Albright observed, said, “When people are uncertain, they’d rather have leaders who are strong and wrong, than right and weak.” Thus, I made the above point to argue that while Trump says the wrong things loudly to empower his supporters, Democratic politicians should stop saying the right things weakly, and instead say the right thing loudly to empower our supporters.
Our base is starved for political candidates who are fighters willing to do something more than write strongly worded letters, thank you Chuck Schumer. It’s that lack of fight that has contributed to historic lows in the Democratic Party’s approval ratings. For as much as Chait slams progressives, he completely ignores that it was centrist Democrats who got everything they wanted in the last three Presidential elections, lost two of them to a fascist, lost the House, Senate, and Supreme Court, and still refuse to reflect that maybe, just maybe, trying to out-MAGA MAGA politicians is a failed strategy. Chait misses this entire point in his attempt at a cheap dunk, all while falsely claiming I said the exact opposite of what I actually said.
Chait’s Second Attack: Misrepresenting What Voters Want
But Chait isn’t done yet. He continues:
Rashid’s argument was anything but timid, and it certainly played well in the Washington, D.C., room. Yet Rashid meant for this event to be more than just a pep talk among allies. His call for a confident, undiluted progressive platform is “how you see people flip red seats to blue,” he said.
Chait finally quotes me accurately. And I stand by this stance because I know what I’m talking about. Pundits almost never spend time actually talking to voters. So, why they speak about people or topics they do not understand is confounding. Such pundits are often the same people who misrepresent all independents as default moderates when the data says they are context voters. The incalculable harm that results from such pundits directing their own unqualified opinions as facts, instead of understanding the actual lived experiences of humans, is irresponsible and beneath the journalistic standards we need to counter fascism.
In this instance, Jonathan Chait has never run for office. I doubt he’s ever knocked on a door, let alone the 15,000+ doors I’ve knocked over the decades both as a candidate and as a volunteer for other candidates. And having knocked on doors of people ranging from as far left or as far right as you can envision on the political spectrum, I speak from experience. Chait, instead, speaks from behind a computer screen. He claims Americans need more moderate and centrist candidates, not progressive candidates. Had Chait ever actually run a campaign or knocked on doors he’d know this fact: What progressives want is in fact moderate in every respect, and it is what most Americans tell us repeatedly they want. And, what Chait and those like him advocate is not centrism, but right wing extremism. Consider the facts.
Racial justice is a moderate stance—racism is extreme. Democrats claiming “woke culture is hurting us” are selling out Black people, and is indefensible.
I can go on, but you get the point. None of these so-called progressive positions are extreme. They are literally the moderate and common sense view, while denying them is in fact right wing extremism. Chait would have us run to the center (wherever that is) to throw Trans people under the bus, ignore the Gaza genocide, gut DEI, and ban asylum. These are all cruel and failed right wing extremist policies being masqueraded as “moderate.”
Don’t fall for it—the Democratic Party base does not want such extremism.
Indeed, beyond the Democratic Party base, the vast majority of Americans reject such centrist right wing extremism, and prefer what’s labeled as the “progressive” stance because that’s how we fight for human dignity. My point was, is, and remains that the Democratic Party should fight for each of these stances unapologetically, in word and in deed, because they are moral, just, moderate, and highly popular. Chait ignores all this, and instead continues his attacks on me specifically and progressives generally.
Chait’s Third Attack: Misrepresenting My Record
Thus, while ignoring facts, Chait’s “evidence” that he’s right comes in the form of his personal opinion and misrepresenting the success I have had in politics. He claims:
Rashid’s track record as a candidate does not quite bear out this confident assessment. He has run for office three times, falling short every time. In 2020, he lost his race for Congress by 16 points in a district Joe Biden lost by four.
There’s three facts that Chait hopes readers don’t know, because they undermine his entire argument.
One, Chait hides that I ran in two deep red rural districts in 2019 and 2020, verbatim on the aforementioned progressive human rights focused platform. In both districts I faced competitive primaries from entrenched party establishment and centrist candidates. And in both primaries I earned record turnout in those rural red districts—and won against those centrist candidates. Thus, in both the 2019 and 2020 general elections, I ran as a progressive and received 10,000 and 40,000 more votes, respectively, than any of the centrist Democratic candidates had ever received in the history of those districts. While that boost was not enough to win the general elections, far from Chait’s claim that my progressive ideas would not resonate, they literally won primary elections against centrist candidates, and earned record turnout in general elections, eclipsing what any centrist candidate had accomplished prior.
And do you know where I didn’t get much support from? Establishment centrist Democrats—the same ones I outperformed with my progressive platform.
Two, yes, I ran behind Biden. Why? Two reasons that have nothing to do with my progressive platform. One, elections cost money. I ran on limited funds and as a new candidate, while Biden ran on billions of dollars and infinite name recognition. More money and better name recognition equals more potential votes. This isn’t a conspiracy, it’s common sense. And two, every candidate before me in those districts ran similarly or worse behind the Democratic nominee for President as I did, all while getting significantly fewer votes than I did. Again, Chait hides these facts, because sharing them undermines his entire argument against progressive positions.
Three, the Democratic Party’s mealy mouthed stance on worker issues is devastating, especially in rural America where I ran. The refusal to fight to abolish so-called “Right to Work” laws, which are grounded in KKK racism. The refusal to fight to pass an actual living wage, as wealth and income inequality are at historic highs. The refusal to fight to break up Big Tech and Big Box monopolies, even as they exploit workers and decimate small businesses. All of it has created a dynamic that makes it much easier for Republicans—like the incumbent Republicans I ran against—to falsely own the narrative that Republicans are better for the economy, while fear mongering about progressives in gerrymandered districts. That many of these Federal and State districts are becoming unwinnable for Democrats ties back to the party’s lack of fighting spirit to achieve what voters want—a Party that fights for working families not just with empty rhetoric but with meaningful policy and legislation. That was the very first point I made, which Chait somehow completely inverted on its head.
I am unsurprised that Chait did not bother to speak with me at the event. Doing so would have helped me disabuse him of his false conclusions. This is not the mark of an honest journalist, but of someone desperately seeking relevancy.
Conclusion
The above is just a part of Chait’s full piece, which then proceeded to shamelessly attack other activists, leaders, and (successful) politicians—whom it appears he did not bother to interview either. As such, he repeatedly quotes them out of context, or otherwise in a way contradicting the actual and intended point of their statement.
But ultimately, what’s at stake here isn’t just Chait’s ego or a dishonest article in The Atlantic. It’s far bigger than that. It’s about the rot within American journalism—a rot that’s been festering for decades. Chait represents an entire class of pundits who confuse access for insight, who mistake provocation for courage, who confuse the Fourth Estate for fluff pieces, and who’ve spent their careers happily laundering establishment talking points into public opinion. These are the same journalists who sold us the Iraq War, who normalized Donald Trump’s fascism, and who now look away as genocide ravages Gaza—all while insisting they’re the voices of reason.
But journalism was never meant to comfort the powerful. It was meant to confront them. The failure of corporate media to hold power accountable—and its instinct to attack those who do—is one major reason our democracy continues to deteriorate. It’s one reason why fascists feel emboldened, and why public trust in the press is at historic lows. When someone like Chait weaponizes misinformation against the people doing real, on-the-ground advocacy, he isn’t merely wrong—he’s setting a dangerous example. His words help shape narratives that justify oppression and death, from Baghdad to Gaza to our own communities here at home.
That’s why this moment matters. As we fight fascism from the White House, we cannot continue to rely on corporate gatekeepers who’ve repeatedly proven that they will side with power over principle. The alternative is clear: build, fund, and uplift independent voices rooted in justice, truth, and human dignity. That’s what the D.C. conference I was privileged to attend and speak at was all about. Back in 2003, platforms like mine didn’t exist, and pundits like Chait could work unhindered to spread disinformation that enabled horrific atrocities like the Iraq invasion.
But now in 2025, how the turn tables? We have platforms now to fight back against disinformation, and we are not afraid to use them to demand and uphold justice.
So yes, I’ll keep writing. I’ll keep dismantling propaganda with receipts, context, and moral clarity. I’ll keep attending inspiring events like the one in Washington D.C. last week. Because this isn’t about flexing egos—it’s about reclaiming truth as a public good. It’s about refusing to let history be written by the Chait’s of the world. By pundits who continue get things catastrophically wrong, and do nothing but double down on their wrongness. Who look at violent fascism versus a functioning Republic, and insist on a centrist compromise between the two. Instead, we must advance a narrative that involves trusting those who continue to get things right, because their currency is truth, not clicks.
Thus, despite being the apparent failed politician that I am, I am proud to speak that truth loudly and unapologetically, while soberly sitting on the right side of history.
Let's Address This with Qasim Rashid is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This crumbling of our ethics and integrity has been happening over decades, promoted by an economic system and a public narrative that glorifies making huge sums of money over any other value in our lives. Chait is an example of what such a system produces. I fear the kind of destruction it will take to put us on the path to correcting such a course. Thank you for being a leader in resisting the destruction and working to change the public narrative.
“Our base is starved for political candidates who are fighters willing to do something more than write strongly worded letters, thank you Chuck Schumer.” Say it LOUDER for those in the back!
This crumbling of our ethics and integrity has been happening over decades, promoted by an economic system and a public narrative that glorifies making huge sums of money over any other value in our lives. Chait is an example of what such a system produces. I fear the kind of destruction it will take to put us on the path to correcting such a course. Thank you for being a leader in resisting the destruction and working to change the public narrative.
“Our base is starved for political candidates who are fighters willing to do something more than write strongly worded letters, thank you Chuck Schumer.” Say it LOUDER for those in the back!