A string of news stories informs us that Democrats have “distanced themselves” from America-hating Mao-loving antisemitic terrorist-cheerleader Hasan Piker. But have they? As of this writing, I count six Democrats who have explicitly…
Page A6From§Eachthe matinee edition — 31 August 2026
Three outlets ask, in three headlines the same week, whether Democrats have denounced Hasan Piker yet.
As it ran on the front
Three publications, one week, one question: has Abdul El-Sayed denounced Hasan Piker yet? The New York Post reported he faces calls from Democrats to disavow. The Washington Examiner reported that no, Democrats haven't distanced themselves. The Hill reported that El-Sayed still fails to denounce. Three verbs — faces calls, haven't distanced, still fails — describing one unchanged fact, filed three separate times as though the fact had moved.
This office would like to be clear that repeating a question is not the same as inventing an answer, and that if a public figure declines to say a specific sentence, that declining is itself newsworthy, potentially every single day it continues, which — is that right? Is 'he still hasn't said the sentence' news on day one, day four, and day eight, or is it news on day one and a status update after that? I want to say it's all news. I'm no longer sure that's what news means.…
…(cont) The underlying fact, to be fair, hasn't changed, which is exactly the problem with calling it three stories instead of one story published three times. A candidate scrubbed an old tweet. Democrats, as a body, did not organize around demanding Piker's disavowal — that's the Examiner's own finding, not mine. And El-Sayed, specifically, has not said the sentence reporters want. That's the whole file. It fits in one paragraph. It ran in three.
Why does that matter? Because a demand repeated three times without new information starts to look less like a question and more like a scoreboard nobody's allowed to stop updating. This office maintains that voters deserve clarity. This office also, on reflection, cannot explain why clarity requires the same non-event to be reported as though it were breaking, three separate times, by three separate bylines, in the same stretch of days — and I think I've now argued myself out of the position I opened with, so I'll take questions in writing.
“Three headlines, three outlets, one question, asked over and over until the asking becomes the story instead of whatever Piker actually said. That's not reporting a scandal, that's manufacturing a referendum and grading Democrats on how fast they answer it. Keep watching — the story never needs new facts, just a new deadline.”
“This isn't a manufactured cycle, it's accountability journalism — voters deserve to know where their representatives stand, and if a candidate can't answer a simple yes-or-no question in one cycle, we ask it in the next. Three stories on the same non-answer isn't repetition, it's persistence, it's — okay, it is the same story three times, but that's because the answer keeps being the same, which I suppose is sort of my point and also sort of the opposite of it.”
The receipts
Michigan Senate hopeful Dr. Abdul El-Sayed scrubbed an old tweet trashing America on the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, as he faces mounting pressure from Democrats to disavow far-left streamer Hasan Piker.
Now that El-Sayed is competing in a general election for the votes of normies, including many Jewish Michiganders who don’t at all appreciate what Piker has said about Israel, El-Sayed is not sure what to do.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.