Twitch streamer Hasan Piker said he would “absolutely” campaign for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., should she run for president in 2028, even as a Democratic U.S. Senate candidate works to put distance between himself and the outspoken commentator.
Piker made the remarks during an episode of “The Axios Show,” taped Wednesday in Los Angeles. Asked directly whether he’d campaign for Ocasio-Cortez in a 2028 presidential bid, Piker replied, “Oh, absolutely, yes.”
“What goes on behind the scenes in the Democratic Party and what gets talked about is entirely different, I think in many respects,” he said.
Piker also said he’s been in contact with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, and with other politicians he described as “not immediately seen as allies to Democratic socialists.”
El-Sayed Keeps His Distance
The comments land as Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, works to separate himself from Piker after a string of controversial statements. Asked whether he’d been invited to campaign for El-Sayed, Piker said he hadn’t been told to stay away from Michigan or asked to come.
“If my services are needed, I’ll go wherever,” Piker said, though he added that a last-minute invitation this close to the midterms would create “real deep problems.” He described his intended role as reaching younger voters rather than older, reliable Democratic voters: “My job isn’t to get 65-plus-year-olds out to vote for the Democratic candidate. My job is to get under 45-year-old, college-educated, and non-college-educated men to come out and participate.”
Comparing the U.S. to al Qaeda
The interview turned sharply when host Alex Thompson raised Piker’s earlier statement that “America is the top dog in terrorism” and asked whether Piker considers the United States worse than al Qaeda.
“Pound for pound as far as the number of deaths, yes,” Piker said. “We have caused tremendous terror all around the world.”
Piker went on to argue that U.S. actions abroad have “consequences on the home front,” citing a strike earlier this year on a school in Minab, Iran. A United Nations fact-finding mission has said it found “reasonable grounds to believe” the U.S. carried out that strike and that it amounted to the war crime of launching an indiscriminate attack. “There’s no distinction between blowing up a school, triple-tapping it with Tomahawk missiles,” Piker said. “If you’re killing 140 schoolgirls, that is an act of terror.” He said not all Americans are terrorists but called for an “environment of accountability.”
El-Sayed’s campaign quickly rejected the comparison in a statement to Axios and Fox News Digital: “I do not agree with this statement [on al-Qaeda], nor do I give much weight to the statements made by a social media streamer. I am more concerned with the dangerous policies of Donald Trump and Mike Rogers that are raising the prices of gas, groceries and healthcare for Michiganders.”
A Democrat’s Balancing Act
Kaivan Shroff, a media commentator and former digital organizer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, said Piker is trying to have it both ways.
“The central tension with Hasan is that he wants his electoral influence taken seriously, but he also wants to operate like a streamer with no responsibility for what his comments create for the candidates he supports,” Shroff said. “You can’t claim credit for helping politicians win and then treat the consequences of your own rhetoric as their problem.”
Shroff pointed to Piker’s public comments about talking to Ocasio-Cortez and her team as a case in point. “Saying publicly that you’re talking to her and her team turns that relationship into a political story whether they wanted one or not,” he said. “If the goal is to help a candidate, sometimes the most useful thing you can do is not make yourself the story.”
On the friction with El-Sayed, Shroff said the two face different pressures. “El-Sayed has every reason to make clear that Hasan does not speak for his campaign, and Hasan criticizing him for creating that distance exposes the conflicting incentives here,” he said. “A candidate has to answer to voters…a streamer has to keep an audience engaged. If Hasan really wants to help the candidates he supports, an easier solution would be to stop handing them inflammatory comments they then have to explain and go away for a while.”
Representatives for Ocasio-Cortez and Piker did not respond to requests for comment from Fox News Digital.
