The media make excuses for the Senate nominee who empowered Hasan Piker

The same industry that has spent 15 years warning about the radicalization of the Republican Party now wants us to apply a little nuance when discussing the Democratic Party's devolution into its own lunatic fringes. An effort is underway to create space between Democratic candidates and the party's radical wing — a real murderers' row of freaks, geeks, and fans of actual murder tied to the Democratic Socialists of America. But not too much space, mind you — lest Democrats need that very same freaky crowd's help to defeat a Republican. It is a ridiculous bit of political maneuvering, but certain journalists are happy to play along. Nowhere is this absurd tightrope walk clearer than in Michigan, where U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (D) is said to have 'distanced' himself from the fringe — including a former campaign surrogate — although he hasn't actually condemned the extremists or otherwise risked alienating them. The surrogate in question is online streamer Hasan Piker, the hilariously misguided answer to the left's question, 'Where is our Joe Rogan?' The irony, of course, is that Joe Rogan was the left's Joe Rogan before they all lost their minds — and that's how they ended up with Piker. In April 2026, standing beside Piker, El-Sayed called it 'critical' that Democrats engage with Piker's audience. It was one of many joint campaign appearances. But Piker is a color-by-numbers political provocateur, prone to saying (jokingly, he claims, but you can be the judge) things such as, 'We're going to keep bringing in immigrants to this country on purpose, just so they can f— your sister and then maybe your daughter;' 'We're going to destroy the white race;' that Luigi Mangione's unarmed murder victim had it coming because he had committed 'social murder;' that Hamas's rapes in its Oct. 7, 2023 massacre in Israel don't matter, he still prefers Hamas to Israel; and of course most famously that 'America deserved 9/11.' This is where matters get tricky for El-Sayed. Piker was a repugnant, upper-class nepo-baby shock jock long before the 2026 midterms. El-Sayed's campaign team was surely aware of the streamer's record when bringing him aboard — if not, it raises serious questions about their competence and his. El-Sayed evidently had no issue with Piker's baggage and gladly took him on as a campaign surrogate. The two mugged for photos at half a dozen events. Their relationship became a political liability only after the broader electorate took notice of Piker's odious character. El-Sayed cannot claim ignorance without looking like an idiot, a liar, or both. Thus, with Piker now an undeniable drag on the campaign, El-Sayed is attempting to create the illusion of distance — but without actually disavowing his ally, and certainly without alienating the streamer's audience. After winning the Michigan primary over conventional, mainstream Democrats, El-Sayed announced he had 'no plans' to stump with Piker again. The Senate candidate also began insisting that hardly any connection exists between himself and Piker, to whom he refers merely as 'a single streamer from California,' remarking, 'You would think if you turn on any media that this whole campaign is about a streamer in California.' 'I don't want to have a conversation about a Twitch streamer in California,' El-Sayed has protested. 'This is not a serious conversation.' Elsewhere, El-Sayed has asserted, 'If you want to make this race about a streamer in California, I just think you're missing the boat' — as if he had not brought the man into his own campaign. He added later that he was 'not interested in a conversation about a social media person in California.' Yet El-Sayed has also tried to frame criticism of Piker as a 'massive effort to cancel Hasan,' which is a bit inconsistent with his comments above. Indeed, El-Sayed consistently refuses to condemn or fully disavow Piker, pushing back on demands he do so with airy phrases like, 'I'm not here to disavow people's views.' So El-Sayed wants voters to ignore the advocate he brought onto the trail, all while sidestepping the reasons he has to distance himself in the first place. This has not stopped more credulous elements of our media from helping out the El-Sayed campaign by adopting its framing, combining mild condemnations with the dismissive 'streamer in California' characterization, and terming it 'distancing.' 'El-Sayed distances himself from popular streamer's comments on Israel and Jewish Americans,' claimed the Associated Press — going so far as to suggest, without any sort of evidence, that the candidate's remarks 'may have cooled the relationship.' The Guardian reported that 'in the span of two days, Abdul El-Sayed distanced himself from leftwing streamer Hasan Piker.' Semafor asserted elsewhere that El-Sayed had 'put more distance between himself and Hasan Piker' by telling a reporter that he has 'no plans' to stump with the 'controversial' commentator. Politico, of course, claimed Republicans have 'jumped' on the controversy. Missing from all this coverage is any acknowledgment that El-Sayed has never condemned or disavowed Piker. Whatever distance exists between them is an illusion resting purely on the candidate's own say-so. Missing from all this coverage is any acknowledgment that El-Sayed has never condemned or disavowed Piker. Whatever distance exists between them is an illusion resting purely on the candidate's own say-so. In contrast, the media almost uniformly insisted in 2022 that then–private citizen Trump was surely ideologically aligned with right-wing provocateur Nick Fuentes, despite Trump's claims that he did not know him and had not invited him to Mar-a-Lago, and despite the absence of any evidence of a partnership. The theory rested entirely on proximity and Trump issuing only a mild rebuke of the antisemitic white nationalist. When Fuentes arrived as an uninvited guest alongside Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago, CNN reported that the dinner proved Trump's 'continued willingness to associate with figures who have well-publicized antisemitic views.' The Associated Press wrote at that time that Trump was 'renewing attention to his long history of turning a blind eye to bigotry' by dining with a 'Holocaust-denying white nationalist.' The Guardian reported that Trump 'repeatedly refused to disavow' Fuentes, alleging Trump 'fundamentally did not want to criticize' him for fear of alienating 'a devoted part of his base.' Those were all straight news reports, believe it or not. To keep track, an unexpected dinner guest and a lack of full-throated condemnation sufficed as evidence of a Trump-led white supremacist coalition, Trump's protests to the contrary notwithstanding. Meanwhile, a few defensive remarks are framed as sufficient evidence of the 'distance' between El-Sayed and Piker, erasing months of joint appearances, photos, endorsements, and even a victory-night rally. Not only that, but El-Sayed even continues to defend Piker as a victim of cancel culture. The problem with journalistic consistency is that sometimes it is likely to cost Democrats votes. We can't have that. Becket Adams is a journalist and media critic in Washington.