Abdul El-Sayed spent months on stage with a man who looked into a camera and said "America deserved 9/11, dude."
Yesterday, on the 25th anniversary of that attack, El-Sayed posted a solemn tribute to freedom and justice.
The backlash was instant – and it was exactly what he deserved.
Hasan Piker's Year on the Campaign Trail With El-Sayed
This isn't ancient history.
El-Sayed didn't accidentally stumble into a photo with Hasan Piker.
He flew Piker into Michigan.
He put him on stage at the University of Michigan in April.
He brought Piker to a campaign party in Detroit as the primary approached in August.
The press releases framed these events as a way to reach younger voters, built around the campaign's "commitment to economic justice."
Piker's version of that economic justice apparently includes saying the country that lost 2,977 people on September 11 had it coming.
This is the man El-Sayed chose as his most visible surrogate in a Senate race that could help decide who controls the upper chamber.
When Fox News grilled El-Sayed about it back in April, he didn't disavow Piker – he invoked cancel culture.
"When did we start bending to cancel culture?" El-Sayed asked on Fox & Friends.
A Senate candidate defended a man who said America deserved a terror attack by accusing his critics of cancel culture.
Piker's "America Deserved 9/11" History Keeps Resurfacing
It didn't stop with 9/11.
Piker called Israel "Jewish ISIS." He minimized reports of mass rape during the October 7 Hamas attack. He told his Twitch viewers last month that American Jews who support Israel are inviting antisemitic violence against themselves.
That last statement finally forced El-Sayed to issue a statement.
"Nobody speaks for this campaign besides me and my campaign spokespeople," he said.
He stopped well short of disavowing Piker by name.
Even some Democrats couldn't stomach it. Rep. Hillary Scholten of Michigan called Piker "a hack who thrives on hate, shock and awe."
Piker shrugged the backlash off – then old footage surfaced of him declaring flatly, "I do hate America."
These aren't Republicans making these accusations. These are members of El-Sayed's own party.
Republicans made the connection impossible to miss at the GOP midterm convention this week. The RNC put Piker's image on a screen and cast him as the walking embodiment of anti-American rhetoric inside the Democratic coalition. President Trump told the crowd El-Sayed campaigns with a "Marxist agitator, who says that America deserved 9/11."
Michigan Has Seen This Playbook Before: The Jeremiah Wright Precedent
Michigan voters have watched this exact script play out on a national stage before, and it ended a campaign.
In 2008, Barack Obama spent an entire spring answering for his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, after tapes surfaced of Wright condemning America from the pulpit.
Obama survived it – but only after a formal speech disavowing Wright, weeks of damage control, and the eventual severing of the relationship entirely.
El-Sayed has done none of that. Eighteen years later, he is running the Wright playbook in reverse: keep campaigning with the man, issue a statement that never uses his name, and hope Michigan forgets by November.
What Michigan Senate Race Polling Shows: El-Sayed vs. Rogers
El-Sayed is asking Michigan voters – many of them over 50, with clear memories of watching the towers fall – to send him to the United States Senate.
The AARP poll released last month found that older Michigan voters – the ones who reliably vote, the ones who remember 9/11 firsthand – favor Mike Rogers by 52 to 43.
Among older swing voters specifically, Rogers leads by 33 points.
That number tells you everything.
El-Sayed is betting his campaign on young, progressive turnout. His coalition runs through Dearborn's Arab American community, college campuses, and the streaming audience Piker helped build.
That strategy works in a primary. Democratic primaries reward exactly this kind of ideological positioning.
General elections are different.
Trump flipped Michigan in 2024 by appealing to working-class voters who don't care about Twitch and care very much about whether a Senate candidate will stand in front of a camera on September 11 and perform patriotism he spent months undermining.
Here's what El-Sayed is actually asking Michigan to believe: that the man who anchored his campaign trail for months is completely unconnected to his views.
He's asking voters to believe that flying someone into your state, putting them on your stage, and sharing a campaign party with them days before the primary is just how modern politics works.
Michigan has two months to decide whether it believes him.
The polling says it's close. The 9/11 anniversary says something else – that there are moments when months of campaign choices become impossible to paper over with a single social media post.
El-Sayed found that out yesterday. The question is whether Michigan's voters remember it in November.
Sources:
- Leo Briceno, "El-Sayed Ignites Firestorm After Sharing 9/11 Message on Social Media," Fox News, September 11, 2026.
- Taylor Penley, "Michigan Democrat Defends Appearing With Hasan Piker, Distances Himself From Podcaster's Controversial Remarks," Fox News, April 7, 2026.
- Fox News Digital, "El-Sayed Distances Himself From Hasan Piker After Controversial Remarks About Jewish Americans," Fox News, August 24, 2026.
- Chuck Ross, "Michigan's El-Sayed Suggests Hasan Piker's 'America Deserved 9/11' Remark Must Be Viewed in 'Context,'" Washington Free Beacon, April 7, 2026.
- Mariane Angela, "Dem Rep. Scholten Shreds Hasan Piker for Targeting Jewish Lawmaker," Breitbart News, August 24, 2026.
- Amy Furr, "Hasan Piker Claims He Doesn't Hate America, then Gets Busted with 'I Hate America' Clip," Breitbart News, August 31, 2026.
- Washington Examiner, "Hasan Piker Flabbergasted Over 'Meat Pic' Shown at RNC Midterm Convention," September 11, 2026.
- AARP Michigan, "AARP Poll: In Tight Michigan Senate Race, Rogers and El-Sayed Are Nearly Tied," August 2026.
