Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul el Sayed on Sunday said he disavowed Twitch streamer Hasan Piker’s statement that the United States “deserved” the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
El Sayed has attracted controversy for repeatedly campaigning with Piker, an increasingly popular political influencer, over that statement, among others. After previously declining to condemn Piker’s 9/11 comment, el Sayed did so over the weekend, though he suggested calls to distance himself from the rhetoric were reminiscent of cancel culture.
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“Of course it was a dumb statement, and of course I think Hasan himself would say that was a dumb statement,” el Sayed said during an NBC News interview. “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?’”
“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,” he added.
El Sayed’s positioning, roughly three months out from the general election, comes after he declined to disavow Piker’s comment earlier in his campaign. In April, the Senate candidate told Politico he was “not here to disavow people’s views.”
Piker said, “America deserved 9/11” in 2019. The attack by radicalized Islamic jihadists on New York City’s Twin Towers killed nearly 3,000 people. Piker later walked back the statement, saying that he “obviously” did not mean it and that “within context I was simply referencing the fact that all of the foreign policy decisions and our arming of insurgent groups in the region and our efforts in destabilizing the Middle East have a direct consequence, a boomerang effect, rather if you will, in causing 9/11.”
El Sayed’s repeated decision to campaign with Piker has also been controversial due to concerns that he holds openly antisemitic views, including comments in April that he “would vote for Hamas over Israel every single time.”
During the NBC interview on Sunday, el Sayed dodged a question on whether he would continue to campaign with Piker in his general election campaign against former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI). The race is expected to be tight, as Michigan is known as a swing state.
“Look, I’m less concerned now with who I’m campaigning with and a lot more concerned about who I’m campaigning to,” El Sayed said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do to continue to build the coalition that’s going to beat Mike Rogers.
“I think we have this notion sometimes on shows like this that we cannot or should not talk to certain groups of people,” he added. “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. And so I’m going to continue to have the conversations with those folks who we desperately need to reach.”
More centrist Democrats have distanced themselves from Piker, including Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL), and Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), who was el Sayed’s top primary opponent.
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Some top Democratic political strategists, such as James Carville, have also expressed concern that some in the party are leaning into Piker, citing concerns over his advocacy for socialism.
“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,” Carville said during a recent Fox News interview. “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.”
