Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed on Sunday pushed back on questions about far-left streamer Hasan Piker, who he previously campaigned with. “There are Jewish voters in your state who are concerned about your relationship with Piker. You have condemned antisemitism but not called out his rhetoric directly.
Page A3From§Eachthe late evening edition — 13 September 2026
El-Sayed swaps "no plans" for "not interested," calls it distance
As it ran on the front
On August 27, in the Detroit suburbs, Abdul El-Sayed told Semafor he has "no plans" to campaign with Hasan Piker. That was the answer. Not a condemnation, not a break, a scheduling note. Piker had campaigned for him during the primary. El-Sayed didn't say Piker was wrong about anything. He said there was nothing on the calendar.
Seventeen days later, on September 13, CBS's Weijia Jiang tried again, more directly this time, asking El-Sayed about Jewish voters worried about his relationship with Piker and why he hadn't called out Piker's rhetoric. El-Sayed's answer had upgraded. He was no longer interested "in having a conversation about streamers in California." That's the distance the candidate has traveled in seventeen days: from no plans to no interest. Same non-answer, restated with more contempt for the question.…
…(cont) Piker did not stand still while El-Sayed practiced his footwork. The same week as the CBS interview, Piker went on his Twitch livestream and defended his "God-given right" to say how much he hates America, after an attack ad tied that rhetoric to El-Sayed's race. So the tightrope isn't hypothetical anymore. It's a live wire: the man El-Sayed won't discuss is on camera, on the record, doubling down on the exact rhetoric the question was about, in the same news cycle El-Sayed is refusing to have the conversation.
The Washington Examiner counted six Democrats, total, who have explicitly spoken out about Piker's remarks blaming Jews who "fail to reject their culture" for violence against them. Six. Out of a party that holds itself up as the guardian against political violence and bigotry, six named people found words. El-Sayed isn't one of them, and "not interested" isn't a seventh.
"Not interested" is not "condemn." It's a category the candidate gets to define for himself, and he's defined it as the one containing questions he doesn't want asked twice.
The tightrope doesn't require El-Sayed to fall. It only requires him to keep not answering, cycle after cycle, while the man beneath him keeps talking, and the wire keeps getting more expensive to walk. Nobody's asking him to disavow a friend. They're asking him to answer a question about rhetoric he's already on record condemning in the abstract. He can't, or won't, connect the abstract to the name. That's not distance. That's the same spot, described more coldly each time someone points a camera at it.
“"Not interested" is what you say to a telemarketer, not to a reporter asking about a guy who just went on camera defending his right to hate the country while your name's in the attack ad next to his. Watch the verbs — "no plans," "not interested" — that's not distance, that's a press secretary's thesaurus. Six Democrats found the words to call Piker out by name; El-Sayed found a way to talk about "streamers in California" instead, and that's the whole tightrope, right there, in real time.”
“Look, "not interested" is a perfectly reasonable answer to a gotcha question about someone else's Twitch career — he's running for Senate, not moderating a livestream. And "no plans to campaign together" is a factual statement about a schedule, that's not a dodge, that's a calendar. Did I just defend a guy for refusing to answer a direct question about antisemitism twice in three weeks? That's not — that doesn't sound like a great two-week stretch, actually, let me get back to you.”
The receipts
Hasan Piker defended his right to say he hates America on his Twitch livestream after an attack ad tied his rhetoric to Abdul El-Sayed's Michigan Senate race.
· El-Sayed walks political tightrope in Michigan with Hasan Piker from the morgue, 2 Sep 2026
· El-Sayed says he has 'no plans' to campaign with Piker from the morgue, 27 Aug 2026
· No, Democrats haven’t distanced themselves from Hasan Piker from the morgue, 31 Aug 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.