WASHINGTON — Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed privately begged his Twitch streamer pal Hasan Piker to tone down his rhetoric as the midterm homestretch heats up, according to a report.
El-Sayed called Piker and warned him that the streamer’s rhetoric was costing the Michigan Democrat votes, two sources told CNN.
During his primary fight against Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), El-Sayed had proudly palled around with Piker, appearing together at a pool party on the eve of the party election.
“This campaign was never about a streamer in California,” El-Sayed told Fox News’ “The Story” with Martha MacCallum when asked about Piker, reiterating his canned line about the controversial Mao-lover.
Piker, who suggested in 2019 that “America deserved 9/11,” before begrudgingly walking back that remark, has a history of espousing far-left ideas.
After igniting controversy with his insults to the US regarding the Sept. 11, 200, terrorist attacks, Piker hung a front-page newspaper story about the attack on his wall in a central location for his stream.
The controversial streamer has also fawned over China’s notorious leader Mao Zedong, cosplaying as him. At one point, he gushed over the “brave mujahideen” who injured outgoing Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), and argued that the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack was a “direct consequence” of Israeli actions.
Additionally, Piker claimed that if Hamas engaged in rape, it “doesn’t change the dynamic for me.”
Throughout the primary cycle, El-Sayed had faced pressure over his ties to Piker, with many top Democratic figures warning that the streamer was a liability for him.
“Oh look. I have been right and AES agrees with me,” Neera Tanden, head of the Center for American Progress, remarked on X in response to the CNN report. She had been one of the leading left-leaning skeptics of Piker.
Last month, Piker unnerved Democrats by sitting down for interviews, returning him to the fore at a time when operatives in the party wanted him to lay low due to concerns he was giving Republicans ammunition.
Piker told Axios that the US has exceeded terrorist acts committed by Al Qaeda “pound for pound as far as the number of deaths.”
El-Sayed is currently leading Rogers by 3.2 percentage points in the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate of polls.
The Post contacted El-Sayed’s campaign for comment.
In addition to the revelation about El-Sayed’s call with Piker, the CNN report highlighted some alarm bells with his support among black voters.
One black leader in the Detroit area recounted to the outlet how he got the sense after talking to El-Sayed that his team believes “they don’t necessarily need to work as hard to get the black vote.”
That leader felt snubbed from a roundtable event with El-Sayed and took a meeting with Republican hopeful Mike Rogers’ team in response.
“I felt so bad, I texted him,” that individual told the outlet. “But I didn’t hear back. So, f—k him.”
