‘America deserved 9/11?’: Meet the Press host pushes El-Sayed on Hasan Piker

Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed addressed old comments from his Twitch-streamer ally Hasan Piker as he appeared on the Sunday show circuit to take his first questions from the national media after winning his Tuesday primary.

El-Sayed narrowly won the Democratic Michigan Senate primary over Rep. Haley Stevens, beating her by a single percentage point after being massively outspent during the race. Ahead of Tuedsay, he faced criticism from Stevens and others for campaigning with Hasan Piker, a far-left Twitch streamer whose stunning remark about the 9/11 terrorist attacks has saddled nearly every politician who has appeared with him or accepted his endorsement.

During a 2019 Twitch broadcast, Piker derisively said that America “deserved 9/11” while arguing that American foreign policy was to blame for the attack by al-Qaeda terrorists. On Sunday, El-Sayed was asked by Meet the Press host Kristen Welker, “Do you disavow those comments?”

The progressive Democrat brushed off his ally’s comments as “dumb” and claimed that even Piker had backed away from them. “Of course. Of course it was a dumb statement. I think Hasan himself would say it was a dumb statement. He disavowed it,” claimed El-Sayed. “So yes, America didn’t deserve 9/11.”

El-sayed then accused both Welker and his remaining critics on the left, some of whom linger after the vitriolic primary, of playing “gotcha politics” and engaging in “cancel culture,” which is generally a line of argument from those on the right politically.

“I want to be held accountable for what I say and do, rather than this idea that we’ve, we’re so stuck in cancel culture that we all agreed was a bad idea back in 2020 but we seem to want to bring back,” said El-Sayed.

His response closely mirrored Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s response when she was asked about Piker on ABC’s This Week. Piker himself noted on a stream Friday that he was “tired” of apologizing for the comment, something he said he’d done repeatedly to total disinterest from his critics.

“Much hay was made about the fact that we lost young men in the last election. Many of the same consultants that are wringing their hands today were the same ones talking about how we have to go on Joe Rogan and not be so willing to engage in cancel culture,” said Ocasio-Cortez.

Progressive Democratic candidates who find themselves aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America and the party’s left flank have refused to disavow Piker himself, under pressure from their centrist opponents. El-Sayed campaigned with Piker over the weekend immediately preceding his primary victory on Tuesday, and other Democrats have appeared on his stream or been the beneficiary of receiving the spotlight his Twitch stream provides over the course of this cycle.

Piker’s presence in the Michigan Senate race was possibly the greatest political test of the effect a firebrand lefty streamer could have on a candidate’s chances.

Both Stevens and El-Sayed’s other former rival, Mallory McMorrow, attacked his campaign over its association with Hasan Piker, only to face a wave of backlash of their own as progressives declared that the fixation on Piker and insinuations that his criticism of Israel were anti-Semitic were, in fact, rooted in Islamophobia. In the end, McMorrow’s campaign never recovered from the steep decline she began with progressive voters once those attacks began, and she dropped out in June.

El-Sayed is in a different position now, however, as he looks toward the general election.

His task remains to win over skeptical independent voters in a state that Kamala Harris narrowly lost in 2020 and Hillary Clinton similarly lost in 2016; he also bears the task of unifying his party after the particularly bitter primary’s conclusion. Fueled mostly by a massive surge of money from AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, Stevens and her allies buried El-Sayed under a massive wave of negative advertising which could make his path to victory in November harder — particularly since AIPAC is likely to spend tens of millions more now in support of Mike Rogers, his Republican opponent.

Those ads accused El-Sayed of being connected to Piker, whom they described as anti-Semitic, and even disparaging Michelle Obama, whose popularity within the Democratic Party and in the majority-Black areas of Detroit and Wayne County remains sky-high. Ads even falsely insinuated that Stevens was endorsed by former President Barack Obama, though he did not weigh in on the race.

On Sunday, El-Sayed said that he’d spoken with the former president and hoped Obama would campaign with him ahead of November. The former president has not yet issued an endorsement, but El-Sayed did pick up an endorsement from another former occupant of the White House this weekend: Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Abdul knows we need bold solutions to the crises facing America’s working families, and he is ready to take on this fight. I proudly stand with him to ensure we win a Democratic Senate majority in November,” wrote Harris in a statement.