"The End of MAGA": Hasan Piker Reacts to Democratic Midterms Blowout

[0:00] We're going to turn right now to the popular political commentator Hassan Piker, who has filed a $72 million defamation lawsuit against Scott Jennings, [0:15] accusing the CNN commentator of deliberately distorting his remarks to make it appear that he supported lynching black people. [0:25] The complaint filed in federal court says Jennings took a false, fabricated and manipulated video of Mr. Piker, added a made up quotation that Mr. Piker never uttered and then made accusations that went beyond even what the manipulated footage purported to show, unquote. [0:48] Hassan Piker is one of the most prominent online influencers on the left, with millions of followers and subscribers. [1:00] During the election cycle, Hassan Piker has supported and campaigned with many progressive Democrats running this election cycle, including Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and many others. [1:17] He's joining us now, I believe, from Los Angeles. [1:22] Hi, Hassan. Thanks so much for being with us. [1:25] Hi, Amy. Thank you so much for having me on. [1:28] I'm very excited to be here. [1:29] Well, you're joining me with Nermeen Sheik and Juan Gonzalez. [1:33] You've been Twitch streaming through the night. [1:38] Talk about your observations tonight of what looks like, as Kai Wright called it, a blue tsunami, as it looks like Dems are taking both the House and the Senate. [1:52] Your thoughts? [1:53] I think it's not a blue tsunami. [1:55] I think it's a blue clear apocalypse. [1:58] This is perhaps the worst possible scenario for the Republican Party. [2:02] I think their odious agenda, their corruption, the impact, the destabilizing impact that they've had all around the world, the endless warfare and its consequences on the American economy are finally coming back to bite them. [2:18] I think this might truly be the end of MAGA tonight. [2:21] I said that earlier in the day. [2:22] There were a lot of people before the results came out. [2:25] A lot of people said that this was an overestimation, but it turns out it is here. [2:31] It is real. [2:32] As you also pointed out, Donald Trump already has conceded, saying he's going to power share with the Democratic Party. [2:38] And I don't think there is a spiritual successor that will be able to rebuild that base of support that Donald Trump was capable of building. [2:48] We saw that fall apart tonight. [2:50] American voters voted against racism, against some of the worst campaigning I've ever seen, all the way from Vivek Ramaswamy attacking Amy Acton for being a victim of abuse as a child by her estranged mother's boyfriend at the time, to the barrage of Islamophobia that Abdullah al-Sayed received. [3:17] It feels pretty good tonight to see that America rejected this kind of toxic politicking, and America's ready for a new type of politics, one that centers the interests of the working class. [3:33] And I will do everything in my power to ensure that we hold the Democratic Party to account to push forth this agenda. [3:40] And, Hassan, as Amy just said, Trump is claiming that the Republicans lost because he wasn't on the ballot, yet the exit polls are showing that people did believe that there were so many Americans that were opposed to Trump's policies that that motivated a lot of them to vote. [3:58] Wondering your reaction. [3:59] No, absolutely. [4:01] I'll tell you this much. [4:03] I was actually maybe a little bit too biased, maybe a little too close to the issue, given that I was presented as a center figure, a central figure in the Republican attack ads in states that I had never even visited before. [4:16] And, therefore, I was a little bit worried that Americans were going to respond to these negative attacks, and I had a fairly pessimistic outlook. [4:30] I thought we would win 52 seats, which is obviously very optimistic in comparison to where the Democratic Party was three months ago or four months ago. [4:40] But still fairly pessimistic, all things considered, especially in comparison to Nate Cohn's last analysis right before the elections. [4:48] But it turns out the Democratic Party's performance is actually beating those expectations, at least what we've seen so far tonight. [4:57] Americans are not fond of Donald Trump. [5:00] I think that marginal popular vote victory that the Trump administration was able to squeeze out for the first time in decades for the Republican Party caused them to get way too confident. [5:14] And in all of that confidence, they believed their own lies. [5:18] They thought they were popular. [5:19] And for the last two years, all we have seen, all we have known is disaster after disaster, with some of the most odious forms of politics seeing daylight with regular frequency. [5:33] But it turns out the rest of America was also seeing exactly what we were seeing. [5:38] They found it to be despicable. [5:41] The impact on the gas prices was unfathomable. [5:46] And people voted against Donald Trump as though he was on the ballot. [5:51] So, Hassan, I just want to ask you about you posted very recently on social media. [5:57] We're skipping woke 2.0. [5:59] We're going right to woke 3.0. [6:02] So if you could explain what you mean by that and then talk about some of the candidates who you were supporting today. [6:09] So, Normeen, I'm not going to lie to you. [6:13] I've drank a little bit tonight in celebration of the performance of some of the elected representatives that I was working alongside throughout the last year. [6:25] And that's just a joke. [6:26] I'm just joking. [6:27] There's this distinction between woke 1.0, woke 2.0. [6:31] I won't get into it. [6:32] But in some respects, I do think that Americans are saying that we would rather have a woke politics, a politics of tolerance, a politics that doesn't target undocumented migrants, a politics that does not target transgender people, and a politics that actually targets the real 1% that is responsible for a good deal of the economic struggles that people are facing. [6:57] That 1% happens to be billionaires, of course. [7:00] And as far as the campaigns that I've worked with, I worked alongside 48 candidates. [7:06] I've interviewed more than 48 candidates last year in 17 different states. [7:13] And many of them were able to defeat incumbents in the Democratic Party. [7:18] And we are now capable of building a real coalition of socialists, self-avowed anti-Zionists in elected office. [7:29] And that's very exciting. [7:31] I think the American socialist movement is having a resurgence right now. [7:34] And I'm just honored and privileged to play at least somewhat of a small role in building this movement. [7:43] Well, what do you think, Hassan, would be the defining policies of a broader left or socialist party in the U.S. at the congressional level? [7:54] I think that, for the most part, many of our allies and many of the self-avowed socialists elected in the office are probably going to tackle the cost-of-living crisis, make affordability the centerpiece of their campaigning and their legislative strategy. [8:11] We are, in the interim, going to be pushing for modest, nominal social democracy, social democratic provisions that other countries in Europe and even in Canada and Mexico already enjoy. [8:25] Hopefully, we'll be able to push for Medicare for all and see some success there and continue building on the successes that we get at the legislative level. [8:36] Hassan Piker, I wanted to ask you about this lawsuit you've brought. [8:43] But first, you've been the center of attacks from Republicans, but also Democrats, to say the least, during this election cycle. [8:51] When Michigan Congressmember Haley Stevens, though I'm not sure at this point whether she's a Democrat or a Republican, but when she narrowly lost the Democratic primary to Abdul El-Sayed, [9:05] endorsed Republican Mike Rogers over the weekend, she said, I do not stand with Hassan Piker, who gets trafficked on our college campuses. [9:16] Can you address the criticism you've gotten from the Democratic Party, but also your lawsuit that you've brought? [9:26] I mean, I was watching him just before we went on today. [9:29] Scott Jennings is one of the many commentators on CNN. [9:35] And talk about what he's done. [9:37] And now your lawyer is saying he's just the beginning of the people you're taking on for misrepresenting what you say. [9:46] Yeah, absolutely. [9:46] So I think what Haley Stevens did is not dissimilar to what Scott Jennings did, what the Republican Party did. [9:54] This was a disciplining operation to smear me and falsely present me and avowed anti-Zionist, a prominent critic of Israel, as a radical, a dangerous radical that was an impediment for Democratic electoral victories. [10:10] And the goal here, in large part by AIPAC, was to inevitably de-platform me. [10:19] Comparisons were made that I find to be heinous between myself and someone like Nick Fuentes, a neo-Nazi, a prominent neo-Nazi. [10:27] I am an anti-fascist, of course. [10:29] I'm a socialist, an anti-imperialist, and an anti-Zionist. [10:32] And yet, through this manufactured outrage campaign, I think the Republicans thought that they could potentially bully the Democratic Party for having any affiliation with me whatsoever, to present me as the bleeding heart of the Democratic Party in some respects. [10:51] It obviously was a demonstrable failure. [10:53] But in order to do this successfully, at least on their end, they had to not address the actual arguments that I was making, but instead attack a straw man that they had concocted. [11:06] A straw man built around lies. [11:08] Instead of having a real honest conversation about America's relationship with Israel, for example, they would just simply claim that I was an anti-Semite. [11:16] This is, of course, not true. [11:17] I've spent my entire life combating anti-Semitism, as well as all other forms of bigotry. [11:22] I am against bigotry of all forms and hate of all forms. [11:28] And yet, they tried to present me as this. [11:31] Scott Jennings took it even one step further. [11:35] And through malicious framing, through clips that were edited completely out of context, and by dramatically changing the context of the statement that I was making on my broadcast, [11:49] he went as far as the claim, through this completely fabricated quote, that I was in favor of lynching black voters. [12:00] This was a bridge too far for me. [12:02] And it's only the beginning. [12:04] My legal team is wonderful. [12:05] Daniel Watkins is the same lawyer that played a role in successfully suing Fox News on the Dominion case and defending Dominion and winning to the tune of a billion dollars. [12:19] But I think for far too long, and this is not even a political issue at all, I think this is a real issue with the media. [12:29] For far too long, people have gotten away with saying whatever they want to and lying about people who they perceive as their political opponents. [12:38] And I think in an effort to try to bring back more productive discourse, we tried to send a cease and desist to Scott Jennings. [12:48] After he released that video, Snopes did an article directly addressing the fabricated quotes that Scott Jennings had put together. [12:58] We sent a cease and desist, he refused to respond to it, and unfortunately he forced my hand to pursue litigation. [13:05] I'm not exactly a litigious person. [13:08] I have been anti-litigation for the longest time. [13:12] But if the media outlets were not going to abide by a code of conduct that understood the importance of the Fourth Estate, then, of course, they left us no other option but to pursue litigation and handle this in the courts. [13:31] And, Hassan, I wanted to ask you about Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. [13:34] And he has about a three percentage point lead in his race for the Senate. [13:42] There's still a lot of votes that haven't been counted, about 60 percent, but virtually none of the votes from Wayne County, which includes the largest city in Michigan, Detroit, have come in yet. [13:54] So you'd expect that he would have, that the Democratic candidate would have a big surge once those votes are counted. [14:01] Wondering if you could talk about your sense of the importance of him being elected, what kind of message that would send to the rest of the nation? [14:10] I think it's very clear that an unapologetic progressive, a bold fighter who has consistently placed the interests of the people over the interests of corporate profits, [14:22] winning a swing state, a so-called swing state like Michigan, would have positive reverberations for American politics for a very long time. [14:33] This will obviously have tremendously positive consequences for the American socialist movement, despite the fact that Abdul El-Sayed is not a socialist himself. [14:42] It would prove that a campaign that simply attacks a candidate on how they pray, that revolves around some of the most odious forms of campaigning that I've ever seen, [14:55] some of the worst forms of Islamophobia that I've ever seen in my life, will not be electorally successful. [15:02] And on top of that, I think it shows that if Abdul El-Sayed can win in Michigan, then socialists and progressives, unapologetic progressives can win anywhere in the country. [15:17] So, this is precisely the reason why, in my opinion, a lot of forces on the right, and certainly even forces that control the levers of power in the Democratic Party, [15:29] did everything in their power to ankle-bite Abdul every step of the way, to make it as difficult as possible for him to develop a winning coalition. [15:39] And nevertheless, Abdul still persisted. [15:42] He was a diligent campaigner, he had a fantastic message, and that message certainly has resonated with Michiganders.