Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed now says Twitch streamer Hasan Piker's claim that America "deserved" the September 11 attacks was wrong, but he still refuses to cut ties with the controversial figure ahead of a general election against Republican Mike Rogers.
El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee in one of the country's most closely watched Senate races, used an NBC News interview on Sunday to distance himself from Piker's 2019 statement, a remark that declared nearly 3,000 Americans killed in the Twin Towers attack had it coming. Yet when pressed on whether he would stop making joint campaign appearances with Piker, El-Sayed dodged, pivoting instead to the streamer's audience reach and his own coalition-building strategy.
The result is a half-measure that satisfies no one. El-Sayed condemned the words but kept the relationship, a stance that puts him at odds with senior members of his own party and hands his Republican opponent a ready-made attack roughly three months before voters decide who fills Michigan's Senate seat.
During the NBC interview, El-Sayed called Piker's 9/11 comment indefensible, then immediately reframed the whole issue as a media trap. He told the interviewer:
"Of course it was a dumb statement, and of course I think Hasan himself would say that was a dumb statement. But you know, to sit here and play gotcha politics with a dumb thing somebody said out of context that they disavowed themselves, to say, 'Oh well, what does that mean about what you think?'"
That line reveals the tension at the center of El-Sayed's position. He wants credit for rejecting Piker's statement while insisting nobody should hold the association against him. He cast the scrutiny as a relic of "cancel culture", a framing more commonly heard from the right, and argued he should be judged only on his own words and actions.
"I want to be held accountable for what I say and what I do, rather than this idea that we're so stuck in cancel culture that all of us agreed was a bad idea back in 2020, but we seem to want to bring back."
But El-Sayed's own record on this question undercuts the Sunday pivot. As recently as April, he told Politico he was "not here to disavow people's views" when asked about Piker's rhetoric. Sunday's disavowal came only after months of pressure from fellow Democrats and growing Republican attacks, not from any apparent change of conviction.
Piker, an increasingly popular political influencer with what El-Sayed described as roughly 3 million listeners, has generated controversy far beyond the 2019 remark. He later walked back the 9/11 comment, claiming he was "obviously" not being literal and was instead referencing American foreign policy decisions and the arming of insurgent groups in the Middle East, what he called "a boomerang effect."
That explanation did not address a separate statement in which Piker said he "would vote for Hamas over Israel every single time." Hamas is the Palestinian militant organization responsible for the October 7 attack on Israel. El-Sayed has not publicly addressed that comment.
The pattern matters. This is not a single careless remark from a young streamer who misspoke on camera. It is a series of statements reflecting a worldview that blames America for terrorist attacks and openly sides with a designated terrorist organization. El-Sayed's decision to keep Piker close, while offering only a tepid verbal rebuke, tells Michigan voters something about what the candidate is willing to tolerate in exchange for political support.
When asked directly whether he would continue campaigning with Piker in the general election, El-Sayed sidestepped again. He told NBC:
"Look, I'm less concerned now with who I'm campaigning with and a lot more concerned about who I'm campaigning to. We've got a lot of work to do to continue to build the coalition that's going to beat Mike Rogers."
El-Sayed's refusal to break with Piker puts him on an island within his own party. Several prominent Democrats have already distanced themselves from the streamer, including Michigan's own Senator Elissa Slotkin, Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, Illinois Representative Brad Schneider, and Michigan Representative Haley Stevens, who was El-Sayed's top primary opponent.
None of those figures appear to share El-Sayed's view that associating with Piker is simply a matter of audience outreach.
The sharpest criticism has come from veteran Democratic strategist James Carville, who said during a recent Fox News interview that he flatly refuses to share a party with Piker. Carville did not hold back:
"To talk about the larger Democratic Party, post the election in Michigan going forward, I am not going to be in the same party with Hasan Piker. I have no intention of ever being in the same political party with that guy. Now, I think that a majority, overwhelming majority of Democrats agree with me, but this idea that we're going to seize the means of production and this, just go look at the [Democratic Socialists of America] platform."
Carville's mention of the Democratic Socialists of America platform points to a broader ideological fault line. The question is not just whether Piker said something offensive six years ago. It is whether the Democratic Party's left flank, represented by candidates like El-Sayed, is willing to align with figures whose politics extend to open sympathy for Hamas and hostility toward the country they seek to govern.
El-Sayed framed his continued outreach to Piker's audience as smart coalition politics. He argued on NBC that Piker's 3 million listeners represent voters he needs to reach with a message about "getting money out of politics" and passing "Medicare for All."
"I think we have this notion sometimes on shows like this that we cannot or should not talk to certain groups of people. And I'll tell you that the 3 million people who listen to Hasan are people I want to make sure understand that there's a pathway into our politics around getting money out of politics so we can get money back in pockets and pass Medicare for All."
That argument might hold in a safe blue district. Michigan is not a safe blue state. It is a swing state where the general election against former Representative Mike Rogers will be decided by voters in the political center, many of them the same kind of older, working-class residents who lost neighbors, relatives, and friends on September 11, 2001.
El-Sayed's primary victory already demonstrated his ability to mobilize the progressive base. Michigan's Democratic landscape has shifted leftward in recent cycles. But a general election demands a different calculation. Keeping Piker on the trail, or even leaving the door open, gives Rogers a clean line of attack: El-Sayed's coalition partner thinks America had the Twin Towers coming.
Meanwhile, the endorsement landscape is moving the other direction. Figures with Democratic ties have already crossed the aisle to back Rogers, a sign that El-Sayed's ideological positioning is costing him support beyond the progressive base he already owns.
El-Sayed wants the political benefit of condemning Piker's words without paying the political cost of ending the relationship. He called the 9/11 remark indefensible, then defended the man who said it. He invoked cancel culture to shield himself from accountability while running for a job built entirely on public accountability.
The shift from April, when he was "not here to disavow people's views", to Sunday's qualified condemnation tracks with the calendar, not with any stated principle. El-Sayed moved only when the general election drew close enough that the Piker association became a measurable liability.
Voters in Michigan will decide whether a candidate who calls a statement condemning 3,000 murdered Americans "dumb", and then keeps the man who said it in his inner circle, deserves a seat in the United States Senate. The answer ought to be straightforward.
