Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed declined Sunday to distance himself from controversial streamer Hasan Piker, while also appearing to signal that middle-class taxpayers could help finance his Medicare for All proposal.
During an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” El-Sayed did not rule out campaigning with Piker in a potential general election contest against Republican Mike Rogers, even as he called the Twitch personality’s 2019 remark that “America deserved 9/11” a foolish comment.
“It was a dumb statement,” El-Sayed said. “He disavowed it. So yes. America didn’t deserve 9/11.”
El-Sayed argued that the focus on Piker’s past comments amounted to political point-scoring. “But to sit here and play gotcha politics with a dumb thing somebody said out of context — I want to be held accountable for what I say and what I do rather than this idea that we’re so stuck in cancel culture that all of us agreed was a bad idea back in 2020,” he said, adding, “But we seem to want to bring back.”
Piker suggested shortly after making the 2019 remark that his statement was “inappropriate,” following a broader criticism of the United States.
He was later seen with a framed front-page newspaper image showing the Twin Towers after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. More than 2,750 people, most of them Americans, were killed in New York City that day.
Piker has also drawn backlash for saying the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack was a “direct consequence” of Israeli actions and for stating that if the terror group committed rape, it “doesn’t change the dynamic for me.”
In other remarks that fueled criticism, Piker praised the “brave mujahideen” who injured Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) and later suggested Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) should be murdered.
The Mao Zedong-loving streamer also took heat for appearing to use a shock collar on his dog during one of his streams.
El-Sayed stumped with Piker throughout his bruising primary race, which Rogers has since used as fodder for attack ads, tying him to the lefty streamer’s suggestion that the US deserved the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“I’m less concerned now with who I’m campaigning with and a lot more concerned about who I’m campaigning to,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do to continue to build the coalition that’s going to beat Mike Rogers.”
During the wide-ranging interview, El-Sayed also acknowledged that his Medicare for All proposal would likely cost middle-class taxpayers, despite his longstanding emphasis on taxing the wealthy more.
“So for the average person, when you look at your W2, if you’re an employee who gets paid every two weeks or four weeks, after you pay your taxes, the next biggest check that comes off the top of your pay stub is to your health-insurance company,” he said.
“Imagine instead of paying that to your health insurance company, whose CEO makes $20 million a year, instead you paid a little bit more in taxes for health care that you wouldn’t lose if you lost your job or turned 26 or got married or got divorced.
“I think that’s a trade that’s worth making.”
Medicare for All would cost between $2.5 trillion and $3.5 trillion annually on average over a decade in increased federal spending, according to a 2020 analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
The cost of implementing the program today would likely be much higher.
El-Sayed’s proposals would have no co-pays or deductibles, which is much more comprehensive than Medicare, whose Hospital Insurance Trust Fund is already projected to go insolvent in the early 2030s.
That increased expansiveness would like push the price tag up even further than what has been estimated.
The US currently has a roughly $7.4 trillion budget for fiscal year 2026, including a roughly $2 trillion deficit.
“Weird. I thought Abdul’s campaign promise was more money in your pocket. This sounds a lot like more money for the government,” Rogers chided on X in response.
