Hasan Piker said America deserved to lose 3,000 people on September 11, 2001.
Now the Democrat running for Michigan's Senate seat won't stop campaigning with him.
And John Fetterman just publicly dared him to keep it up.
The Man Democrats Are Betting a Senate Seat On
Piker isn't some random eccentric on the internet.
He has 3.1 million Twitch followers, appeared at a Detroit pool party the night before Michigan's Democrat Senate primary, and has campaigned openly alongside Abdul El-Sayed throughout the race.
He has also called Mao Zedong "one of the great leaders of this world," said he would "vote for Hamas over Israel every single time," and displayed a Hezbollah flag on camera.
But the 9/11 comment is the one that won't go away.
"America deserved 9/11" – Piker said it in 2019, on a livestream, with no ambiguity.
He later called the phrasing "inappropriate."
https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/2086464079711830222?s=20
Not wrong. Inappropriate.
El-Sayed's response was to say he doesn't share all of Piker's positions – and then keep campaigning with him anyway.
That's when Fetterman had enough.
"I dare you to continue to campaign with people like Hasan Piker," Fetterman said in a Washington Post interview, "because he now will quickly find out it's easy to campaign in the echo chamber as a Democrat."
The Seat Democrats Cannot Afford to Lose
Michigan's open Senate seat – being vacated by retiring Democrat Gary Peters – is one of roughly a dozen races that will decide control of the Senate.
El-Sayed won the most expensive Democrat Senate primary in history, with more than $80 million pouring into the race.
He beat establishment-backed Rep. Haley Stevens and now faces former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers in November.
"He has put that seat in play," Fetterman said, citing El-Sayed's anti-Israel views and his alliance with Piker as liabilities that play well in a Democratic primary and collapse in a general election.
The feud turned personal after a Washington Post host played El-Sayed a clip in which he described Fetterman as "an a——" and said he "seems miserable" in the job.
Fetterman's answer was brief.
"He just has like this weird little man syndrome energy just going around insulting people," Fetterman said. "And that's the kind of campaign that he's run."
Democrats Are Already Jumping Ship
The collapse started almost immediately after El-Sayed's primary win.
Julian Epstein – former chief counsel for the House Judiciary Democrats during the Clinton impeachment proceedings – published an op-ed in the New York Post announcing he would personally support and contribute to Rogers' campaign.
"After decades of giving my all for Democratic House and Senate candidates, this fall I will support – and contribute to – Mike Rogers," Epstein wrote. "And I'll do everything I can to make sure other Democrats follow."
Jill Biden's former press secretary, Michael La Rosa, amplified the statement publicly.
Epstein said the party had "lost its moral center" and that its leaders – with one exception – had "sought to appease the dangerous faction rising in our midst."
The exception he named was Fetterman.
The RNC isn't waiting around to see how this plays in November.
"El-Sayed is a terrorist sympathizer and an America-hating socialist," RNC National Spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre told Fox News Digital. "His refusal to distance himself from Hamas-hugging radicals like Hasan Piker reaffirms his true allegiance is to terrorist groups, not America."
This is what happens when a party spends years rewarding its loudest, most radical voices and assumes primary energy translates into general election wins.
https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/2086459856643391879?s=20
Fetterman has already warned that Democrats ran this same play in Maine – and handed Republicans a seat they didn't need to lose.
Piker told a Wisconsin rally crowd last week: "Michigan is not a swing state, and neither is Wisconsin."
He said it like it was a winning argument.
Rogers is going to spend the next three months reminding Michigan voters exactly what they nominated instead.
El-Sayed will find out in November what Fetterman already knows: the echo chamber has a way of going very quiet on election night.
Sources:
- CJ Womack, "Fetterman 'dares' El-Sayed to stick with Piker," Fox News, August 9, 2026.
- "Rising Democrats stand by Twitch star who said America 'deserved' 9/11," Washington Times, August 4, 2026.
- Julian Epstein, op-ed, New York Post, August 7, 2026 (via Conservative Brief).
- "Another Longtime Democratic Staffer Breaks with His Party, Endorses Mike Rogers," Breitbart, August 8, 2026.
- "Fetterman warns Dems Senate seat now 'in play,'" Mediaite, August 5, 2026.
- "Front-runners in swing states put trust in 'America deserved 9/11' internet star," Washington Times, August 3, 2026.