Unfiltered Live (April Edition) | Nerd Prom, Skin Suits, and Sharon's Deleted Post

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit riveraandreeves.substack.comJim Acosta, Joy Reid, Mehdi Hassan, and Wajahat Ali walked into a group chat — and Meseidy listened so you don't have to. This month's Unfiltered Live unpacks the White House Correspondents' Dinner spectacle, the legacy media class that got fired and rebranded as Substack "independents," and the tidy little skin-suit trick where progressive ex-anchors gut a platform and then demand respect for it. Meseidy and Rachel also dig into Sharon McMahon's post-Charlie Kirk meltdown, the New York Times article rehabilitating her cowardice, and why deleting a post and then explaining it on someone else's terms isn't principle — it's marketing. Plus: book recs, prepper sewing classes, a bird that builds its own house, and the great Joanne's Fabrics tragedy of 2025. Subscriber-only. Unedited. Unrehearsed. Exactly the way you wanted it.🎧 Hit play above. This one's just for paying subscribers — no clips, no cross-posts, no YouTube version coming later. If a friend forwarded you this and you want in on the next one (last Saturday of May, 11:30 AM ET), upgrade below. Tell them we sent you.🚨One quick note before you hit play: we're off next Tuesday and Thursday. Rachel's at an event in DC, and frankly we both needed a beat to breathe before the next news cycle eats us alive. We'll be back the week after.Thank you Becky Dultmeier, Sarah Twilley, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.Episode Highlights* Why the White House Correspondents’ Dinner stopped being journalism and became “nerd prom” — and why a roomful of Chrissy Teigens tells you everything* The 250-signature open letter from “defunct journalists” begging attendees to protest Trump, and why nobody who actually fears a gulag tweets jokes about gulags* The Substack skin-suit problem: identify the institution, kill it, gut it, wear the carcass — Meseidy walks through the Stephen Miller piece on how legacy media is colonizing independent publishing* The double standard nobody on the left will name: independent right-leaning media built from zero while ex-MSNBC hosts get welcome workshops and promotional emails* Sharon McMahon’s deleted-post damage control and why The New York Times trying to launder it as a principle didn’t land* A complete tonal pivot into books, dystopian novels, the tailor bird, and why the right is learning to sew while the left wonders why Joanne Fabrics closed.