Hasan Piker
SEE DEFAM SCOTT JENNINGS BLK LYNCH maj rept old playbk divide
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3rd way 30-50m$ to attack prog
5 25 26
INFLUENCER --> CHARGED/INVESTIGATED FOR STAYING IN FORBID HOTEL BUT NICK S ACTUALLY DID; FOOD AND MED SUPPLIES.
POD SAVE ~ABDUL AD CAPL BLOOD IN STREETS
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an 11 26 DING DONG? DISBAR
On Monday, the Supreme Court upheld the disbarment of a prominent MAGA lawyer and right-wing judicial activist who has previously been accused of weaponizing the courts at the behest of President Donald Trump. Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman had appealed the Florida Supreme Court’s ruling last year, which imposed a two-year suspension on his law license, but the country’s highest court has maintained the punishment.
Klayman has been one of the foremost conservative legal activists since launching Judicial Watch in 1994, which has primarily targeted Democratic administrations and election officials to push a right-wing court agenda. Over the past decade, the organization and Klayman himself have played key roles in pushing Trump’s voter denial claims, targeting DEI policies and asserting MAGA conspiracy theories, and the group was found to be one of the top purveyors of false information regarding Covid.
Through it all, Klayman has been repeatedly sanctioned by various courts. He was banned for life from appearing before judges in California and New York due to his erratic in-court behavior. He’s previously been suspended for periods of 18 months by both the D.C. Court of Appeals and D.C. District Court over ethics concerns, and these previous disciplinary actions were taken into account by the Florida Supreme Court when it suspended him last November, ruling that he had broken ethical rules by representing a client for whom he developed romantic feelings. According to the Florida Supreme Court, “the record includes writings from Klayman in which he expressed to [a client] that his emotions had rendered him nonfunctional as a lawyer,” and the court also found that he'd engaged in “a pattern of misconduct,” “bad faith obstruction of disciplinary proceedings,” “submission of false evidence” and more, lending justification for a lengthy suspension. While he said at the time that he was “confident” the decision would be overturned, the U.S. Supreme Court has now upheld that disbarment.
The decision throws a wrench into a number of Klayman’s current cases. Most recently, Klayman has been representing MAGA influencer Laura Loomer in a defamation lawsuit against HBO and comedian Bill Maher. In September, he also filed suit against progressive influencer Hasan Piker seeking $150 million in damages under claims he’s incited violence against Jewish and Christian Zionists. Piker was quick to respond to the news of Klayman’s disbarment, posting, “Isn’t this the guy who was suing me for antisemitism for like a billion dollars?!” Many other courtwatchers celebrated the ruling. “This is a beautiful precedent,” declared one, adding, “More of this please.” And another summed up the sentiments among many, asserting, “Couldn’t have happened to a griftier guy.”
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mma 11 26
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an 10 26
CNN tries to pretend its MAGA scandal 'never happened': report
CNN has a growing problem on its hands as its outspoken MAGA pundit Scott Jennings finds himself in serious legal hot water, and as one journalist argued, it is not a problem that they can keep pretending "never happened."
Earlier this week, Jennings, CNN's resident Trump-supporting pundit, was sued in a Washington D.C., federal court by Hasan Piker, a popular leftist Twitch streamer whom Republicans have attempted to exploit as an allegedly extremist boogeyman to damage certain Democratic midterm candidates. Piker accused Jennings of defamation, citing an August episode of the former's radio show in which he said that Piker was "out there calling for Black voters to be lynched."
Piker is seeking $72.5 million in damages from the clip, which appeared to have been picked up by Jennings' show after it was shared on social media by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The lawsuit explains how the clip was faked using pieces of three different streams, cutting out the part when Piker said "He said" about the Black voters comment, which showed that he was mocking comments made by someone else.
Writing about the situation for his personal blog, veteran reporter and Mediaite founder Colby Hall noted that the extent of the coverage CNN has given to the lawsuit has been "64 words that [aggregate] Variety’s reporting for the Reliable Sources newsletter" on its website, with no mention of the story on-air.
"CNN has extensively covered Piker for the better part of the last year, often as a progressive problem for Democrats," Hall explained. "He’s unquestionably become a major political figure, as has Jennings, so the complete lack of coverage of a lawsuit Piker filed against its own contributor is conspicuous at best. I reached out to CNN for comment on why they have not covered a significant story featuring one of their most prominent commentators. They have not replied."
He added further: "I get it. Jennings is a CNN contributor, not an anchor, and the network pays him for the hours he’s giving click-friendly hot takes. Salem pays him for his radio show and should be held responsible for what it airs. Networks increasingly feature panelists better known from other platforms, where the incentive is to be the most provocative version one can be. Networks get livelier panels, but don’t take responsibility for what the panelists say elsewhere. Television shows are watched, and headlines are clicked... This situation is much harder to dismiss because Jennings isn’t just your run-of-the-mill CNN panelist. The network effectively built a show around him and relies on his point of view for every debate, convention, and major speech. A federal lawsuit accusing one of the network’s most prominent conservatives of inventing a quote is a big deal. Entirely ignoring it on air feels like a failure."
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RWW 9 26
- Finally, Michele Bachmann absurdly insists that streamer Hasan Piker is "the leading spokesman for the Democrat Party right now."
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an 8 26
President Donald Trump’s latest effort to seemingly profit off of his office is, according to some online conservative commenters, not merely unethical — it could seriously harm the US economy.
“The most corrupt family in American history,” former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) wrote on X on Sunday. He cited a recent Wall Street Journal report on how a Trump appointee smoothed the path for his family-owned cryptocurrency firm to become an official bank. “And they can be so openly, so obscenely, corrupt because we don’t have a Congress, and because way too many Americans just don’t care. What a damn shame.”
Another conservative, The Bulwark founder Sarah Longwell, posted on X that this demonstrates how they are “the Trump crime family.”
The pair of conservatives were referring to a recent report by The Wall Street Journal's Vicky Ge Huang on how the Trump-controlled government body the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted preliminary conditional approval to turn World Liberty Financial into a bank.
“Upon final approval, World Liberty Trust will operate as a federally chartered national trust bank,” Huang wrote. “The charter will allow World Liberty to issue, redeem and safeguard USD1, the dollar-backed stablecoin that World Liberty launched last year. The stablecoin, whose reserves are currently custodied with BitGo, has a market value of about $4 billion.”
Because Trump has already profited immensely from cryptocurrency since starting his second term, the timing of the announcement exacerbates the prevailing impression that he operates with no regard for his myriad conflicts of interest.
“The approval comes as President Trump’s $1.4 billion earnings from his memecoin and crypto ventures have become the biggest roadblock for passing a landmark bill that would create a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets,” Huang explained. “The Clarity Act has stalled, driven in part by disagreements over ethics language that would prohibit government officials from profiting off digital assets. The bill is scheduled for a procedural vote on Sept. 15.”
The journalist added, “President Trump and his two sons helped launch World Liberty in late 2024 as a decentralized finance, or DeFi, project that would offer borrowing, lending and trading services. Those features still haven’t become available, but World Liberty now offers borrowing and lending through a partnership with Dolomite.”
Huang continued, “The crypto empire has created a huge chunk of his family’s recent windfalls. In 2025, he earned more than $500 million in proceeds from selling World Liberty’s token, WLFI, and an additional $263 million connected to the sale of equity in World Liberty to a group of investors led by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al Nahyan, a United Arab Emirates royal.”
Conservatives are not alone in denouncing Trump’s new band. Left-wing commentator Hasan Piker posted on X that “even [Turkish dictator Recep] Erdoğan and [Russian dictator Vladimir] Putin have to hide their corruption,” while Trump and his family “are doing it out in the open and there are still cattle that think he’s the second coming
More succinctly, Mother Jones journalist David Corn wrote that “suckers await.”
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MMA
08/07/26
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lauren egan 4 26
IN THE AFTERMATH of the 2024 election, a few points of agreement emerged among Democrats about where the party had gone wrong. Chief among them was that candidates simply had to ditch the litmus-test culture that had forced them to adopt positions outside the mainstream and led them to avoid uncomfortable or tricky interviews.
Among those most vocally making the case were center-left organizations like Third Way, which urged the left flank of the party to recognize that a winning coalition requires tolerance of a wide range of viewpoints. They begged candidates to stop listening to advocacy groups and to refuse to fill out questionnaires and policy pledges that they argued had pushed the party too far left.
For a good part of the past year, this consensus held. Democrats embraced a just-win-baby! mentality as they branched out to different podcasts and generally avoided the rhetorical and policy missteps that plagued them in 2024.
But as the midterms near, the consensus is now being tested—and it’s Third Way doing the testing.
The group has spent the past few weeks urging Democrats to distance themselves from Hasan Piker, the widely popular Twitch and YouTube streamer. The group’s president and press adviser, Jonathan Cowan and Lily Cohen, coauthored a Wall Street Journal opinion piece arguing that Piker’s “misogyny is indistinguishable from that of far-right influencers” and accusing him of antisemitism, saying that there was “no excuse for putting political tribalism before Jewish safety.” Things escalated last week when
, who is running in the Democratic primary for Michigan’s open Senate seat, announced that Piker would campaign with him on college campuses. Then, this morning, Cowan sent a letter to El-Sayed warning that it would be a “stain” on his character if he followed through with the planned rallies, especially after a Michigan synagogue was attacked last month. The letter lists six questions in bullet points, asking El-Sayed to respond:
:{[
To Third Way’s critics, this was nothing short of abject hypocrisy—a group applying litmus tests to a liberal candidate after demanding that liberal groups drop the litmus tests they placed on mainstream candidates.
“This is so clearly Third Way riling people up in a way that is so disingenuous,” said Amanda Litman, the cofounder of Run for Something, a progressive group that recruits and trains first-time candidates. She emphasized that part of politics is “having to deal with people who say crazy things you don’t agree with—and you have to work with them anyway.”
“Who’s doing the scolding here?” she asked. “I thought we weren’t supposed to be canceling anyone anymore.”
For Third Way, there is nothing inconsistent about its approach. In an interview, Cowan told me he draws a distinction between demanding policy purity from a candidate and moral clarity. He argued that if Piker had said offensive things about a minority group other than Jews, Democrats wouldn’t have hesitated to shun him. For El-Sayed to rally with Piker, he said, is as if George Bush had campaigned with David Duke instead of denouncing the KKK leader.
Most significantly, Cowan made it clear that he’d rather accept some electoral risk than see the party show flexibility on this front.
“If people really are arguing that the price of winning is becoming like a bigoted misogynist like Hasan Piker, then I’ll take not winning,” Cowan told me. “What is the point of reviving the Democratic party so it can compete in an age of right-wing populism, if the price of that is you mainstream bigoted, anti-American, misogynistic voices?”
THAT PIKER HAS GAINED this type of lightning-rod status for Third Way is a testament to two things: the controversial statements he has made in the past and the size of the audience he has in the present.
The 34-year-old operates one of the most-subscribed-to channels on Twitch, has sat for glossy magazine profiles, and has been generally viewed as the type of person who could be the “liberal Joe Rogan” that Democrats need—someone who would help the party regain cultural relevance and reach people who had tuned out its message. After all, he is an unapologetic progressive who lifts weights and pops Zyn and has millions of men (mostly young, mostly white) flocking to his stream to watch him game and analyze the news.
Given the size and makeup of his audience, operatives have hustled to get their candidates booked on his stream. Recent guests include: Sen.
(I-Vt.); Rep.
(D-Calif.); California gubernatorial candidate
; Chicago Mayor
; former Obama adviser
;
, who is running in the Democratic primary to replace retiring Rep. Nancy Pelosi in California; and
.
“If you want to run for office and engage in politics today, you have to go to where people are actually paying attention,” said Chakrabarti. “It’s ridiculous that the Democratic party is on the one hand saying ‘Let’s find our own Joe Rogan on the left,’ and then you have someone like Hasan—who is actively engaging the populations the Democratic party wants to engage with—and they’re not willing to go on his stream. I think it shows a disrespect for voters, and that’s, frankly, one of the reasons people keep not voting for Democrats.”
But Piker has also said some offensive things. He can be crass and cocky and kind of annoying. He has hesitated to support Democrats he views as too moderate, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Joe Biden.
And then there are his comments about Jews and the Middle East. He often blurs the line between thoughtful anti-Zionism and antisemitism—a problem that Democratic leaders have grown increasingly worried about as the situation in the Middle East grows more unstable. He has
to Orthodox Jews as “inbred.” In a 2019 video, he said that “America deserved 9/11.” He later said that his remark about 9/11 has been taken out of context from the larger point he was trying to make about the “boomerang effect” of the U.S.’s interventions in the Middle East. And he likewise maintains that his other critiques have been of the Israeli government and not the Jewish people.
Despite the controversy—or because of it—millions of people turn to Piker for their news. As evidence of his draw, El-Sayed’s campaign told me that they’d received more signups—by far—for their rally with Piker than for any of their other events.
THE DEBATE AROUND PIKER goes deeper than clashes over campaign tactics and media strategy; it involves questions about what is required of the Democratic party in this political moment to keep Donald Trump’s authoritarian project at bay. If democracy really is at risk, do Democrats have the luxury of kicking someone like Piker out of their tent, or does it require making political alliances with people who have said bad things on the internet? Alternatively, is staying away from Piker an important part of guarding the party’s boundaries, something that has to be done even when the stakes for democracy are existential?
For a while, the party seemed to have clear answers to these questions: that, generally speaking, the pursuit of power did not require purity or perfection; and that the party needed to go everywhere and talk to everyone. But, as is often the case, the Democratic political class also is invested in winning intraparty ideological wars. And sometimes that has come at the cost of winning elections. That might not be the case in 2026. But there’s also a nonzero chance that this soon devolves into escalating calls for cancellation.
“The tent already includes [Piker],” Usamah Andrabi, a spokesperson for the progressive group Justice Democrats told me when asked about Third Way’s response to Piker. “I think the question is actually whether our tent should continue to be big enough for a very vocal minority of corporatists and right-wing hawks who are still trying to keep this party under the grips of corporate interests and war-hawk lobbies like AIPAC.”
Ladies and gentlemen . . . the Democrats!
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Opinion
Bulwark Host’s Defense of Hasan Piker Exposes Never Trump’s Hypocrisy — And Hands a Massive Electoral Gift to MAGA
Alex Griffing
Thu, April 9, 2026
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Tim Miller
Screenshot via social media
There was a time, not so long ago, when the Never Trump movement was full of effective critics of President Donald Trump. They were undeniably part of the winning coalition for PresidentJoe Biden in 2020, helping pull Biden over the line with swing voters in key states like Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan – but that time has long since passed.
The Bulwark was at the forefront of the Never Trump mission, to platform principled conservatives making the case against Trump’s MAGA-brand of populism in an effort to peel off right-leaning voters or at least ensure that conservative criticism of Trump didn’t get snuffed out entirely.
Fast-forward to 2026 and the Bulwark’s biggest star, host of their flagship podcast, Tim Miller, is arguing for a “big tent” opposition to Trump – one so large that it should include illiberal (by Miller’s own acknowledgement) influencer Hasan Piker. Miller’s argument landed him in hot water with many on the center right, who accused him of boosting the very same kind of figure he spent years railing against in Trump. Miller’s take also marked a watershed moment for him – an inflection point in which he undeniably morphed from effective critic to unwitting booster of the MAGA movement at the polls.
Last week, Miller laid out his case for Piker in a late-night “sermon” and then a day later participated in a debate with Bulwark publisherSarah Longwell on the topic, who made the case that Piker should be nowhere near Democratic Party electoral politics. Longwell, while appearing to try and do some damage control around Miller, made the case that he was minimizing Piker’s long history of bigoted and misogynistic commentary – while also ignoring Piker’s regular shilling for authoritarian regimes in places like China and Cuba, as well as his simping for terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
“He’s a China, Russia sympathizer who hates women, hates Israel. He’s all the toxic things. I was listening to you last night and I was like, my biggest problem with it, because I agree with you in some places, my biggest problem is I felt like you were soft-selling who this guy is. At one point, I think you called it impure thoughts or something,” Longwell told Miller duringtheir debate.
Miller replied by suggesting that anyone on-air for dozens of hours a week will inevitably say a lot of inflammatory things, never really addressing the substance of the worst of what Piker brings to the table. Miller then laid out his case for why he wants Democrats to go on Piker’s popular show:
We can just be honest, it’s moving Hasan’s direction on the question of Israel. And you’re like, we’re going to pick a fight with him on that? Right now? I don’t get it. We did this already five years ago, where a bunch of liberals were like, you can’t go onJoe Rogan, he had some bad opinions. And it’s like, we can’t do this shit again.
As the debate went on, Longwell tried a few different lines of argument to try and bring Miller around, arguing that you can’t defeat Trump’s indecency and populism by embracing someone like Piker, who also plays on “people’s worst impulses.” Longwell compared the two and argued that Trump “appealed to the racism, the xenophobia, the hatred, the bad stuff” and that the left should not swing more to their extremes and try to win with the same tactics.
Miller conceded this point in a way, saying, “Who is the person in the Democratic Party that is advancing these real anti-Semitic views, like Tlaib sometimes in the House? I’m happy to condemn her when she talks. Tlaib, Omar. Okay, but all right, these are two random members of the House. So sure, I’ll condemn them. But the power structures in the Democratic Party, this is nothing like Trump.” Miller also made clear, under duress, that he doesn’t think Piker should be on the campaign trail for Democrats, and he disagrees with him on policy.
The debate only briefly touched on electoral politics, which was where Longwell really let Miller off the hook, given that Piker was making headlines in recent days for headlining a campaign rally for progressive U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. El-Sayed is running to the left of Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) and State Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D) in a state that Trump won in 2024. El-Sayed is running competitively in the primary against the two more establishment Democrats, but would almost certainly cost the party a Senate seat if he were to advance to the general election – a likelihood ignored by Miller and made all the more real given his association with Piker.
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edit war? Hasan Piker - Wikipedia
4 26
Hasan Doğan Piker[a] (born July 25, 1991), known online by the name HasanAbi, is an American Twitch streamer, influencer, and left-wing political commentator. His content primarily consists of political and social commentary and media consumption.[3] As of 2026, Piker's Twitch channel ranks among the platform's most-subscribed.[4] Piker has been described as one of the biggest voices on the U.S. left.[5] Piker started streaming on Twitch in March 2018, while working at The Young Turks (TYT).
In January 2020, he left TYT to focus on his career as a Twitch streamer. Piker has regularly spoken about the Gaza war, advocating for Palestinians, and criticizing the Israeli government.
Early life and education
Hasan Doğan Piker was born on July 25, 1991, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to Turkish parents. He grew up in Istanbul and was raised as a Muslim.[6][7] His father's family emigrated from Thessaloniki and Crete, Greece, to Turkey.[8] His father, Mehmet Behçet Piker, is a political scientist and economist who served on the Board of Directors (and as Vice President) of Sabancı Holding, and who is a founding member of the conservative Future Party in Turkey.[9][10] His mother, Ülker Sedef Piker (née Uygur),[11][12] is an art and architectural historian teaching at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.[13][14] His uncle, Cenk Uygur, is a political commentator and co-founder of The Young Turks, a left-leaning news network.[15]
Piker returned to the United States and attended the University of Miami, then transferred to Rutgers University, where he joined the Theta Delta Chi fraternity. He graduated cum laude from Rutgers with a double major in political science and communication studies in 2013.[16][7][17] After graduation, Piker moved to Los Angeles, California.[18] In 2021, Piker purchased a $2.7 million, 3,800-square-foot (350 m²) house in neighboring West Hollywood.[19] Most of Piker’s streams have been filmed in his house.[18]
Career
2013–2018: The Young Turks
During his senior year of college in 2013, Piker interned for The Young Turks. The network's ad sales and business department hired Piker after he graduated. He asked to host the show when a fill-in was needed and later became a host and producer.[7][17]
In 2016, Piker created and hosted The Breakdown, a TYT Network video series that aired on Facebook and presented left-leaning political analyses targeted, at the time, at millennial supporters of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.[16][17] Piker also contributed political content to HuffPost from 2016 to 2018.[1][20][21]
2018–2020: Early Twitch career and The Young Turks
Piker at TwitchCon Europe in 2019
Piker started streaming on Twitch on March 23, 2018 while working at TYT.[6][22] In January 2020, he left TYT to focus on his career as a Twitch streamer.[23] Piker said that he shifted his attention from Facebook to Twitch in order to reach a younger audience and because of what he felt was a preponderance of right-wing commentators on YouTube and a lack of leftist representation among streamers.[3][24][25] He became a popular left-wing political commentator and was invited to appear on KTTV's The Issue Is and the political podcast Chapo Trap House.[3][26][27] His YouTube channel features highlights of his streams, and in 2022, reached over 1,000,000 subscribers.[28] Piker also streams gameplay and commentary of video games on his Twitch channel.[23][29][30] Sometimes Piker will role-play as "Hank Pecker," an ethno-political caricature of a "right-wing redneck".[31][32]
During a Twitch stream in August 2019, Piker criticized American foreign policy and made controversial comments relating to the September 11 attacks, including "America deserved 9/11."[33][34] Piker described his comments as satirical and cited American foreign policy as promoting conditions to make an event like 9/11 possible but acknowledged that he should have used "more precise" language.[33] Piker received a short-term ban for his comments.[34]
2020–present: Prominence on Twitch
After leaving TYT, Piker became one of Twitch’s most-watched political livestreamers, hosting news commentary, interviews, and gameplay streams.
On October 19, 2020, U.S. representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez collaborated with Piker and fellow Twitch streamer Pokimane to organize a stream of the Representative playing the popular multiplayer game Among Us for the "Get out the vote" initiative for the then upcoming presidential election.[23][35] The stream aired the following day, featuring both Ocasio-Cortez and U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar playing the game with Piker and other popular Twitch streamers, reaching a total concurrent viewership of almost 700,000.[36][37][38]
During the first 2020 United States presidential debate on September 29, Piker had over 125,000 viewers watching his commentary of the stream, the highest viewership of the debate on Twitch.[39] Piker's stream covering the results of the 2020 United States presidential election peaked at 230,000 concurrent viewers and was the sixth most-watched source of election coverage across YouTube and Twitch, comprising 4.9% of the market share.[40][41][42][43] He was the most watched Twitch streamer during the election week; his 80 hours of streams were viewed for a cumulative 6.8 million hours by an average of 75,000 concurrent viewers.[6][44][45] Piker's stream reached a new high of 231,000 viewers during the January 6 United States Capitol attack.[46]
In 2021, Piker was banned from Twitch for one week after using the slur "cracker" in reference to white people, after two of his chat moderators were banned for using it.[47][48][49] Piker argued the term should not be considered a slur since a person using it is "powerless" and would be "doing it as someone who has been historically oppressed blowing off steam." He further contended "cracker" is not a slur in the same way as other terms.[47] A paper in New Media & Society criticized Twitch for punishing Piker while epithets aimed at minority groups were prevalent on the platform.[50] Piker's 2024 election night coverage stream had 7.5 million total viewers.[51]
On February 28, 2025, Piker stated that if Republicans "cared about Medicare fraud or Medicaid fraud, [they] would kill Rick Scott," in a reference to Scott's involvement in Medicare and Medicaid fraud when he was the CEO of Columbia/HCA. Piker was banned for 24 hours by Twitch on March 3 in relation to the comment.[52] On May 25, Piker received a 24-hour ban from Twitch for "improper handling of terrorist propaganda" after showing an alleged manifesto of Elias Rodriguez, the perpetrator of the 2025 Capital Jewish Museum shooting.[53]
During the 2026 Democratic Party primaries in Michigan, Piker campaigned for Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed. Two of El-Sayed's opponents, Mallory McMorrow and Haley Stevens criticized Piker's involvement based on past remarks, particularly regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict.[54][55] Progressive Democrat Carrie Rheingans cancelled an event with Piker while continuing to support El-Sayed.[56] In that same period, both Politico and The Guardian noted a growing unease within the Democratic Party regarding Piker.[57][55][58]
Fundraisers
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Piker, in partnership with CARE, raised over $200,000 for Ukrainian relief funds while playing Elden Ring, with an average of over 70,000 people watching his coverage of the conflict.[59][60][61]
In the aftermath of the February 6, 2023, Turkey–Syria earthquake, Piker organized a fundraiser that was also contributed to and promoted by other streamers and content creators, including Jacksepticeye, Valkyrae, Ludwig Ahgren, and IShowSpeed. As of February 10, the fundraiser had raised over $1,200,000 for charities such as CARE International's Turkish and Syrian branches, as well as two Turkish NGOs: the AKUT Search and Rescue Association, and Ahbap, which was founded by Turkish musician Haluk Levent.[62][63][64]
During the Gaza war, Piker's charity drive on his channel raised over $1,000,000, as of October 21, 2023, for the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, American Near East Refugee Aid, Medical Aid for Palestinians, and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.[65][66]
Other ventures
Since 2021, Piker has hosted the podcast Fear& (formerly *Fear&Malding*) alongside his friend and fellow Twitch streamer, Will Neff.[67] Streamers QTCinderella and AustinShow later joined the podcast as co-hosts in 2022.[68]
From September 26, 2021, to October 12, 2023, Piker co-hosted the left-leaning political podcast Leftovers with co-host Ethan Klein.[67][69]
Views and political beliefs
piker has been most commonly identified as a leftist, a socialist, and a Marxist.[6][28][70][71] He has advocated in favor of workplace democracy,[72] universal health care,[73] LGBTQ+ rights,[73] anti-Zionism,[70] and gun control.[74] Andrew Marantz of The New Yorker described Piker as anti-Trump but "hardly a loyal Democrat". Instead, Marantz classified Piker as an "old-school leftist," critical of the "American empire".[70] In an interview with GQ magazine, Piker stated that his goal was to push the Democratic Party to be more progressive.[75] Intelligencer called Piker "the AOC of Twitch".[34]
Piker has cited his upbringing in Turkey under the Premiership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as an influence on both his left-wing views and willingness to speak out about them.[28][17] He has mentioned Amy Goodman, Jon Stewart, Aaron McGruder, and Bill Burr as influences on the content and style of his streams.[76]
American politics
Piker supported the presidential primary campaigns of Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020[73] and has been an outspoken critic of both the Democratic and Republican parties.[7][77] Piker opposed Donald Trump's travel ban in 2017.[17][78] Following the arrest of Luigi Mangione (the suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson), Piker supported Mangione and praised the tactic of the propaganda of the deed on his stream but avoided breaking Twitch's terms of service rules regarding glorification of violence.[70]
In May 2025, Piker was detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago after returning from a trip to France. According to Piker, the officials who questioned him during his detainment knew who he was and asked him detailed questions about his views on Donald Trump, Israel, Houthi rebels, Hamas, and his bans from Twitch. Piker believes that he was detained due to his political views and that his detainment is part of intimidation tactics by the Trump administration to silence political opposition. Tricia McLaughlin, the Assistant Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security, accused Piker of "lying for likes" and said it was a routine inspection that any traveler could be subjected to.[79][80][81]
In the 2025 New York City mayoral race, Piker expressed support for Zohran Mamdani, and Mamdani appeared as a guest on Piker's stream.[82] During the campaign, Mamdani's political opponents used Piker's past remarks, especially his 2019 comment that "America deserved 9/11", in attacks against Mamdani, including in a televised advertisement aired by a pro-Andrew Cuomo super PAC.[83] Mamdani disavowed Piker's comments during a mayoral debate, calling them "objectionable and reprehensible".[84]
World affairs and conflicts
Russian invasion of Ukraine
During the prelude to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Piker insisted throughout February 2022 to his audience that Russia would not attack. Piker continued to do so as late as February 23, 2022, the day before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.[85] Piker subsequently apologized, stating "[I] didn't think a regional power would act so irrationally. I've admitted my mistakes. I got things wrong."[59][85]
Gaza war and accusations of antisemitism
Piker has regularly spoken about the Gaza war, advocating for Palestinians and strongly criticizing the Israeli government.[86][87]
Andrew Marantz of The New Yorker noted that Piker's criticism of Israel, as well as his comments about Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah, had generated controversy. The pro-Israel group StopAntisemitism nominated Piker as "Antisemite of the Year" in 2024.[70] In January 2024, Piker interviewed a Yemeni self-proclaimed "pirate" who had filmed himself on board the Galaxy Leader, a Bahamas-flagged ship that had been held captive by Houthi militants since November 2023.[88]
In November 2024, Congressman Ritchie Torres criticized Twitch for alleged "amplification of antisemitism", specifically calling for an investigation into Piker.[86] Piker defended himself, arguing that he did not criticize Jewish people as a whole and was only anti-Zionist.[86][87][89] A campaign by various commentators pressured advertisers to leave Twitch due to the platforming of alleged antisemitism, including Piker's political commentary of the conflict.[86][87] Both Torres and the pressure campaign posted clips of Piker's channel they alleged to be antisemitic. Piker rejected the charge, arguing the clips were taken out of context.[86][87][89] Because of the controversy, some advertisers have pulled advertisements.[89]
China
In November 2025, Piker visited China and appeared on the state-run China Global Television Network, where he said he wanted to see what the United States could "adopt and emulate" from the country and described the trip as a "dream come true." During a livestream at Tiananmen Square, police briefly questioned him after a ceremony, an interaction that attracted media attention.[90] During the trip, Piker displayed a copy of Mao Zedong's Little Red Book, which he said he had received as a gift and described as "really, really special".[91]
In a December 2025 interview with The Guardian, Piker said that despite "its flaws and repressive attitudes towards certain groups," China had "greatly improved the material conditions of the average Chinese person".[5]
Reception
Piker has been described as Twitch's "de facto political commentator" who uses an unabashedly ideological framing.[92] Followed by approximately 3 million people on Twitch, he has emerged as a prominent commentator among young American leftists since 2025, largely due to his critiques of the Trump administration.[5][93] Outlets dedicated to video game culture and youth culture have covered Piker's streams positively. In particular, journalists have noted his ability to "combine information and entertainment,"[17][92] and to approach left-wing political coverage in a way that is relatable and accessible to Twitch viewers, who may feel out of touch with cable news.[40][94][95][59] Some authors also cite Piker's vulgar, animated style of expression and his physical appearance as notable factors behind his popularity.[17][94][96]
In July 2024, Alex Mahadevan of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies cited Piker as an example of the "online chattering class" who do not hold themselves to journalistic ethics, in contrast to their peers in traditional media, saying Piker "shares as much misinformation as anyone on the [political] right." ^[97] A September 2024 article in the academic journal Digital Journalism discussed a similar theme, characterizing Piker as emblematic of an emerging "newsfluencer" class (influencers who mainly cover news) with a tendency towards "problematic behavior" that conflicted with journalistic objectivity.[96] In April 2024, a contributor to the same journal noted that Piker is familiar with journalistic mechanics such as sourcing, framing, and objectivity but rejects these as methods used for "manufacturing consent for elites." ^[92] Instead, Piker mainly sources his information from social media, often supplied to him by his audience.[92] The Washington Post has also categorized Piker as a news-based influencer who does not feel bound to journalistic objectivity.[59]
Andrew Marantz of The New Yorker noted that Piker was controversial on both the political left and right: "When Piker is criticized by the right, it's usually for soft-pedaling the brutality of Hamas, or the Houthis, or the Chinese Communist Party... By the left, he is more likely to be dismissed as a limousine socialist who lives in a $2.7-million house."[70] According to Kieran Press-Reynolds, writing for GQ magazine, Piker was also controversial among liberals and the Democratic Party, the cause of which Piker attributed to his criticism of Israel.[75] However, Marantz also wrote that Piker's tolerance of controversy and appeal to young men made him an ideal candidate for the "Joe Rogan of the left".[70]
In a GQ profile, Piker cited when he had previously been criticized for playing other content creators' videos on his streams while he was off-camera as an example of a time he handled criticism poorly and later adjusted his behavior.[75]
Awards and nominations
Gaming website Kotaku selected Piker as one of their "Gamers of the Year" for 2020, citing him as a major figure in the mainstreaming of political commentary on Twitch, a platform that in the past was seen as discouraging political discussion.[45][95][98] Piker won a Streamy in the News category at the 10th annual awards in 2020 and was nominated again in the same category for the 2021 event.[99][100] In 2022, Piker was nominated in the categories News, Just Chatting, and Streamer of the Year, winning the News award for the second time and being nominated for three consecutive years.[101][102]
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duck 4 26
- WFMD-AM
Who is Hasan Piker? Meet the far-left streamer who is stirring up ...
7 days agoInfluential, far-left Twitch streamer Hasan Piker is dividing the Democratic Party, with some candidates campaigning with him and others condemning his rhetoric.
AP News
How big of a tent do Democrats want? Hasan Piker is testing the limits ...
2 days agoProgressive Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is teaming up with online streamer Hasan Piker for campus events that are already sparking backlash.
New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com › 2026 › 04 › 08 › style › hasan-piker-abdul-el-sayed-michigan.html
Hasan Piker Can Stream, but Can He Stump? - The New York Times
1 day agoHasan Piker Can Stream, but Can He Stump? The progressive and popular Twitch streamer, who is controversial with some Democrats, tests his political influence on the 2026 campaign trail.
Sun Sentinel
Who is Hasan Piker, the left-wing streamer dividing Democrats over ...
Mar 31, 2026"Hasan Piker is an unapologetic antisemite," Schneider, who chairs the New Democratic Coalition, wrote in a post on X. "Democrats risk losing our credibility to condemn those on the right ...
NPR
https://www.npr.org › 2025 › 10 › 08 › nx-s1-5551191 › hasan-piker-charlie-kirk-free-speech-trump
Hasan Piker talks free speech after Charlie Kirk's killing : NPR
Oct 8, 2025Hasan Piker, the popular leftist streamer on Twitch, worries the U.S. will end up in "an authoritarian nightmare" if the Trump administration succeeds in punishing speech it deems unacceptable.
The Guardian
'I love when my enemies hate me': how Hasan Piker became one of the ...
Dec 11, 2025Piker isn't particularly fazed by any of this, it seems. "I have no issues getting vilified by people on the right. I love when my enemies hate me," he says.
The Stanford Daily
https://stanforddaily.com › 2026 › 04 › 02 › hasan-piker-us-labor-politics
Streamer Hasan Piker talks imperialism, labor and politics
7 days agoTwitch streamer and left-wing political commentator Hasan "HasanAbi" Piker condemned what he called 'U.S. imperialism,' and urged labor mobilization and political education in front of a ...
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