Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul el Sayed wants everyone to stop talking about his terrorist-supporting, America-hating buddy Hasan Piker, even though el Sayed made Piker a central figure of his campaign.

The latest round of damage control for el Sayed comes after Piker did an interview with Axios, where he said, among other things, that the United States is more terroristic than al Qaeda and that the Middle East would be more stable if Iran had nuclear weapons, among other things. This falls in line with Piker’s typical beliefs, which are that terroristic acts committed against the U.S. are “deserved” (as he said about 9/11), and that destructive, murderous regimes such as Iran or China are grand and heroic.