The Piker Diversion

By Abe Greenwald

Yesterday, Abdul El-Sayed went on Meet the Press. From what I can tell, the exchange that’s gotten the most attention came at the end of his appearance, when Kristen Welker asked him about his relationship with Hasan Piker. She asked whether El-Sayed would continue to campaign with the pro-Mao, pro-Hamas, pro-9/11 influencer. El-Sayed dodged the question but said he was interested in giving Piker’s millions-large audience “a pathway into politics.” Asked whether he disavowed Piker’s comment that “America deserved 9/11,” El-Sayed said, “of course,” and added that Piker himself has disavowed it.

I don’t believe this answer any more than I believe his claims about loving the Jewish people or embracing capitalism. But I want to flag something else: Hasan Piker is getting outsize attention in the Senate race in Michigan—which could turn him into a kind of heat shield for El-Sayed. 

This is, of course, paradoxical. If El-Sayed is buddies with someone as despicable as Piker, that should reflect poorly on him as a candidate. But the emphasis being placed on this relationship makes it seem as if the worst thing about El-Sayed is that he’s associated with this awful person. It’s not.

El-Sayed isn’t, after all, like Barack Obama, and his relationship to Piker is not akin to Obama’s relationship with Jeremiah Wright. Piker and El-Sayed are contemporaries, rising through the ranks of the same revolutionary movement. Piker isn’t anywhere near the outermost fringe of El-Sayed’s political and social circle. In fact, El-Sayed is much closer to jihadist terror organizations than Piker is. So why are we talking about Piker?

It’s El-Sayed whose campaign has taken in hundreds of thousands of dollars from dozens of donors connected to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 case against the Hamas-supporting Holy Land Foundation. It’s El-Sayed’s father-in-law, Tayeb Jukaku, who was once the president of CAIR Michigan, is a founding member of the Islamic Society of North America—where he sat on a founders’ committee with Muslim Brotherhood members—and is the number-one donor to the super PAC supporting El-Sayed’s campaign.

And it’s El-Sayed who explained away the Hezbollah-inspired terrorist attack on a Michigan synagogue and Jewish day school as an expression of the terrorist’s pain—noting that “hurt people,” in turn, “hurt people.”

It would have been nice if Kristen Welker had asked him for his comments on any of that. But what we’re hearing about, more and more, are his thoughts on Hasan Piker. And making Piker out as the bad apple that’s spoiling the socialist-Islamist crop disguises the fact that they are all—not just El-Sayed—rotten. What’s more, it’s a great deal for the candidate and the designated bad influence. Piker is thrilled to have the attention diverted his way. His brand is ugliness. Every mention he gets means more audience, more interviews, more puff pieces, more money, and more influence.    

I noted last week that attacking radical anti-American candidates, no matter how much they deserve it, isn’t as effective as we’d imagine. But when you do go after the radical, you should at least make sure that he’s the one who feels the impact. 

Abe Greenwald is the executive editor of COMMENTARY.