Nothing like being a gracious winner, eh?
David wrote earlier about the difficulties that Michigan Democrats face in pulling the party together after the narrow result in Abdul El-Sayed's primary win over Haley Stevens. Both sides spent tens of millions to castigate each other in the fight for the nomination to the U.S. Senate, and the result belied the idea that El-Sayed has significant momentum within his own party, let alone among the general electorate. The first task in such situations is to stanch the bleeding and appeal for unity among friends.
Generally speaking, most analysts would not suggest having your chief surrogate accuse voters in your own party of being bigots and "pieces of s***." And yet, here's Hasan Piker with his particular idea of a charm offensive to unify Michigan Democrats:
🔥 @hasanthehun popped the fuck off here: "Everyone being like, 'Abdul has a fuck-ton of work to do mending bridges', here's the fucking take nuke for you: You are all unbelievably Islamophobic pieces of shit. You literally called the dude a fucking terrorist for months on end… pic.twitter.com/m3D29EV2nL
— adri ♡ (@socialistadri) August 5, 2026
... and called him a sexist, misogynist, terrorist, bad candidate, fake doctor when he has two fucking degrees. And now you're going to say sit there and be like, 'you really gotta come to me now.' What are you talking about? Do you wanna win or not? LOCK THE FUCK IN."
Well, as long as you ask so nicely ...
The arrogance of Piker is astonishing to behold, and at the same time hardly surprising. Many wonder at how the Left can embrace socialism and Islam at the same time. Piker's declaration here makes it clear: both socialism and Islam require submission. And that is precisely what Piker is demanding now that the primary is finally over. And in this case, it's Piker who's making Islam the issue, not to mention Israel.
In fact, Piker goes on to vent his spleen at the Democrats who still support Israel and don't trust a candidate funded by a father-in-law with connections to the Muslim Brotherhood:
PIKER: Like, everyone is already doing the canal side [?] Unite the Democrats, and that question is just, can El-Sayed get the pro-Israel vote? Can El-Sayed win over, not even the vote necessarily, but can El-Sayed get the people, and the groups, and the NGOs, and the consultants who have worked extensively for pro-Israel candidates, to shut the f*** up about El-Sayed being a terrorist, for a long enough timeline so that, you know, we can consolidate the base and defeat the f***ing Republican?
Gee, I don't know. Can Piker shut the f*** up about Islam long enough for that strategy to actually unfold? Prediction: Naaaah.
It wasn't Stevens or other Democrats that made Israel the issue in this primary cycle. That strategy came straight from the Democratic Socialists of America and their fellow-traveler progressive Democrats. It takes a particularly sharp point with El-Sayed, however, due to his father-in-law's connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and the millions he poured into El-Sayed's primary campaign. Piker wants to shut down any discussion of these ties by demagoguing it as "Islamophobia," but the money trail leads right back to unindicted co-conspirators in a terror-funding case from twenty years ago:
Abdul El-Sayed's father-in-law, a top donor to a super PAC supporting the left-wing Michigan Senate hopeful, is among the top leaders of an Islamic organization identified by the federal government as a public facing group for the Muslim Brotherhood, a Washington Free Beacon review found. As part of his role with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which the federal government linked to the financing of Hamas, Tayeb Jukaku contributes at least $5,000 to the organization annually.
Jukaku has served on the 20-member founding committee of ISNA since at least 2007, according to the organization's magazine, Islamic Horizons, and has been a member of the group for a "long time, cannot recall [when I joined]," according to Jukaku's online bio. Federal prosecutors identified the organization as an unindicted co-conspirator in the landmark 2007 terrorist financing case USA v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which culminated in the conviction of the foundation's founders for funneling $12 million to Hamas. They also identified the ISNA as one of eight entities "who are and/or were members of the US Muslim Brotherhood." ...
Lorenzo Vidino, the director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, said ISNA "was historically, no question, an organization created … by the Muslim Brotherhood and fellow travelers from the Indian subcontinent as basically the Islamist organization in America." He noted that Tayeb was involved with the group "when they were putting out some really nasty stuff."
"To be on the founding committee, this is the elders of the organization," Vidino told the Free Beacon.
Piker doesn't want Democrats to follow the money. Following the money is apparently Islamophobic, except when socialists and progressives obsess with the Jooooooooos.
Even aside from this, though, Piker's attack on half of the voters in the Democrat primary will do more to burn the party in the general election than warm up its prospects. Some of these voters just won't show up at all in the Senate race, and some may choose to split their ballots to support Mike Rogers, who has a much less deranged approach to Israel and the Middle East. El-Sayed's weak win points up the problem of taking a radical agenda into an election in a purple state, and perhaps especially on the issue of Israel versus 'Palestine.'
The July iteration of the Harvard-Harris CAPS poll demonstrates the risk. Public favorability on Israel is split evenly at 37%, a low number for what had been a nonpartisan policy arena until recently. However, compare that to others in the same question:
- DSA: 26/43
- Socialism: 25/48
- Palestinian Authority: 17/45
- Hamas: 11/59
- Hezbollah: 8/51
Israel is more popular than anything that El-Sayed and Piker are selling. So too is capitalism, at 43/32, and free enterprise at 53/13. Doubling down on Hamas and socialism and mumbling about Jewish conspiracies may get Piker a lot of social-media love, but we may have seen the high-water mark for it among Democrat voters. Just wait until the full statewide electorate gets a chance to deliver its verdict.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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