Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman delivered a blunt rebuke of his fellow Democrats for embracing a socialist streamer who has praised Mao Zedong and defended Cuba's communist regime, warning that the party's leftward drift is costing it credibility.
Fetterman made the remarks on the sidelines of the Israel on Campus Coalition's National Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., where more than 800 pro-Israel college students gathered for advocacy training and discussions on combating antisemitism. Speaking with Fox News Digital, the Pennsylvania Democrat singled out Hasan Piker, a socialist streamer who has openly praised Mao Zedong and defended Cuba's communist government by blaming America for the island's suffering.
Fetterman did not mince words about what Piker's rising profile means for the party he still calls home:
"I would never try to elevate... a communist just because [Piker] has followers on some, on Twitch, whatever that is. But overall, if you identify with a communist who praises Mao and Cuba and for these places, that should be foreign to any Democrat. Without a doubt, that's having an impact."
That last line is worth sitting with. A sitting Democratic senator, not a retiring moderate, not a cable-news pundit, stood at a pro-Israel event and told his party that platforming a Mao admirer is dragging it somewhere voters will not follow. The statement lands harder because Fetterman is not a Republican operative lobbing attacks from the outside. He ran as a progressive in 2022. He won. And now he is telling his own side that the direction is "troubling."
Piker is not just a political commentator with a webcam. He has emerged as an influential voice on the Democratic left, backing socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and campaigning alongside Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. That Michigan race, a Democratic primary pitting El-Sayed against more moderate Rep. Haley Stevens, was too close to call early Wednesday morning.
Fetterman has repeatedly insisted he will remain a Democrat, even as the party's activist wing moves in directions he openly opposes. But Tuesday's primaries illustrated the tension. In Missouri, Rep. Wesley Bell defeated the comeback bid of former Rep. Cori Bush, who had been backed by the Democratic Socialists of America. That result offered a data point for Democrats who believe the socialist wing can be beaten at the ballot box.
The Michigan Senate primary told a different story. El-Sayed, who drew support from prominent socialists including Piker, ran neck-and-neck with Stevens deep into the night. Whether the socialist-aligned candidate ultimately wins or loses, the closeness of the race shows the faction's strength in a major swing state, exactly the kind of contest that keeps Fetterman sounding alarms.
The senator did not limit his criticism to online personalities. He went after California Gov. Gavin Newsom by name, accusing him of describing Israel as an apartheid state, and saying Newsom knows that characterization is false.
"I see the midterms right now that the more radical, the more anti-Israel, and the people have turned Israel as to the ultimate litmus... When you have [Gov. Newsom] describing Israel as an apartheid state. He knows better, that that's not true."
Fetterman framed the party's shift on Israel as a collapse of core values, not a policy disagreement. He said Democrats cannot "pander to those kinds of people" and called out the left's use of "Zionist" as a slur:
"The left is using the term of Zionist as like a slur or use Zio or Zio, or describing that as someone that in the negative terms. In other words, being proud, pro-Israel, that's become a slur, and people have to defend that."
In a separate appearance on Fox News Channel, Fetterman went further, declaring there is "a rot" in the Democratic Party and calling out Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for "standing with pro-Hamas people" like Piker. He also stated flatly that "there was never a genocide in Gaza" and rejected placing conditions on U.S. aid to Israel, saying the country was "in an existential war."
Those are not the words of a man trying to keep peace with his caucus. They are the words of someone who has decided the argument matters more than the relationship. Sen. Bernie Sanders has already called Fetterman "way out of touch" over these positions, which tells you where the party's energy sits.
Fetterman also staked out ground on Iran that isolates him almost completely from his Democratic colleagues. He said he was the only Democrat to support the Trump administration's strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and the only Democrat to vote against the War Powers Act in relation to Iran.
"I think I was the only Democrat to support the Trump administration to bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities. If you don't want them to acquire a nuclear bomb, it's pretty reasonable to bomb their nuclear facilities, they want to build one. And overall, the Iranian war, I've remained the only Democrat to vote against the War Power[s] Act."
He added a broader point about the decades-long failure to confront Tehran: "I would say that for almost half a century, every American president had been trying to address the problem with Iran. The problem is Iran. That's the problem."
Those votes put Fetterman in a category of one within the Democratic caucus on national security, a position that has led him to openly question whether his party still has room for pro-Israel voices like him.
President Trump, who had warned earlier in the summer that the Democratic Party had moved "far beyond socialism" after socialist candidates won primaries in New York, returned to the theme late Tuesday night. Asked what it would mean if more socialists prevailed in the latest round of primaries, Trump offered a characteristically direct assessment:
"I think they should form another party, the communist of America party. I think they should have a new party, the communists of America, and it will do well, it'll get about 10% of the vote."
In June, following those earlier New York results, Trump had been more pointed still, calling the socialist-aligned Democrats "hardcore, godless communists" and describing their rise as "the most serious threat to our country since its existence." He called the Democratic Party a "mess."
Whether or not one shares Trump's assessment of the threat level, the underlying observation is hard to argue with. When a sitting Democratic senator and a Republican president are both saying the same thing about the same faction, that it is radical, anti-American in its sympathies, and corrosive to the party that hosts it, the faction's defenders have a problem that goes beyond messaging.
Senate Republicans have noticed Fetterman's trajectory. Senate Republican Leader John Thune has publicly said the GOP would welcome Fetterman if he ever chose to leave the Democratic Party. Fetterman has ruled that out, for now. But every time his party elevates another Mao-praising streamer or turns "Zionist" into a slur, the distance between Fetterman and his caucus grows a little wider.
A party that has to be told by one of its own senators that praising Mao should be "foreign to any Democrat" has already lost the argument. The only question left is whether it notices.
