During CNN’s election coverage on Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said that while he doesn’t agree with Hasan Piker that America deserved 9/11, “we need a big tent. And I think people like Piker should be welcome into that, certainly.” He also stated that the choice between Democratic Strategist James Carville and Piker isn’t “much of a choice” and “you can turn the tables around and say, do you really want to be in a party where your leadership is taking huge amounts of money from AIPAC, which is supporting an extremist Netanyahu government that many of us believe has committed genocide?”
Host Abby Phillip asked, “[L]ast night, the popular but very controversial streamer, Hasan Piker, was at one of El-Sayed’s final events. The two did a stream together, a fairly lengthy stream. I know that you’ve spoken to Hasan Piker in the past, but are you comfortable with El-Sayed having a close association with him, given some of his past statements, to give you an example, one of the more controversial ones is that Piker has said America deserved 9/11. Are you comfortable with that association?”
Sanders answered, “No, I am not. And I think that’s a dumb statement. On the other hand, he has a whole lot of followers, and there are a lot of things that he’s saying that are making sense to a lot of people. I think we have to get above cancel culture. When you’re doing radio, whatever they do, podcasts three hours a day, you say dumb things. I suspect if you go back over your career, there may be one or two things that you’ve said that you may have regretted. But I think what we have got to do is look at the totality of where people are coming from and go forward.”
Phillip then asked, “So, when someone like James Carville says he doesn’t want to be in the same political party as Hasan Piker, which one are you going to take?”
Sanders answered, “Well, that’s not much of a choice. If Mr. Carville doesn’t want to be in my party, the party that I belong to, that Piker, that El-Sayed belongs to, he can start his own party. But, look, what we are doing now is, you can turn the tables around and say, do you really want to be in a party where your leadership is taking huge amounts of money from AIPAC, which is supporting an extremist Netanyahu government that many of us believe has committed genocide? Do you want to be in a party with people who do that? Do you want to be in a party which has not stood up to the AI industry, because they got a lot of money from AI or from crypto? So you could pick whatever you want to pick. But I think we need a big tent. And I think people like Piker should be welcome into that, certainly.”
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