Symone Sanders Townsend tells Piker she would advise candidates to disavow him
Symone D. Sanders TownsendCo-host, "Clock It" (MS NOW)
Symone Sanders Townsend told Piker to his face that as a campaign strategist she would advise candidates to disavow him, arguing he does not help Democrats win.
“I used to work campaigns, Hasan, and I have to tell you, if I was a strategist or a consultant or the political director on one of these campaigns, I would absolutely be telling my people to disavow you. I really would, because we wanna win! We wanna win, and so, like, if you're not gonna help people win, distance.”
Reporting
Where this statement fits
Hasan Piker's Axios Show interview claims about terrorism, Iran, China and Israel
In an interview for "The Axios Show" conducted by Alex Thompson, Hasan Piker was asked whether America commits more terrorism than the organization behind the September 11 attacks and answered "Pound for pound as far as the number of deaths, yes," adding that the United States has "caused tremendous terror all around the world." He cited a U.S. missile strike on an elementary school in Minab, Iran, and said the analysis does not justify the September 11 attacks. Excerpts published September 17, 2026 also carried his view that the Middle East would be more stable if Iran had a nuclear weapon, while he said he does not want Iran, the United States, Russia or China to possess nuclear arms and was not advocating Iranian armament. The full episode, published September 18, added further contested claims: that Mao Zedong was "a great man of history" whose "excesses" were "deaths born out of mismanagement and famine"; that a Chinese child may have better conditions than an American one within two decades; that "Zionism is fascism" and that he is not worried his audience would turn violent against Zionists; and that Israel "in its current formation" should not be a U.S. ally. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan for whom Piker campaigned in the primary, rejected the al-Qaeda comparison. The dispute is whether these claims are defensible analysis of U.S., Middle Eastern and Chinese policy or indefensible positions, and what they mean for the candidates associated with him.
Source and context
Reporting
About this source
Fox News report on Hasan Piker's interview on the MS NOW podcast "Clock It," co-hosted by Symone D. Sanders Townsend and Eugene Daniels, quoting the exchange at length. The article dates the exchange to Wednesday, September 16, 2026, though one of its photo captions gives September 17. The same article separately recaps Piker's response to an attack ad against Abdul El-Sayed during an earlier Friday livestream, which took place on September 11, 2026.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Before the quotation
Said to Piker during his Wednesday, September 16, 2026, interview on the MS NOW podcast "Clock It," which she co-hosts with Eugene Daniels.
After the quotation
She added, "I've elected people, though. You've never elected anybody," and separately rejected Piker's comparison between Hamas and people protesting police violence: "it sounds like the example that you just gave that the people who are protesting the police are Hamas. And I just would reject that as somebody who has protested the police before."
How this statement is classified
The label describes this statement's response within the context above.
Why this label?
This case covers two prongs: whether Piker's comparison is defensible, and what his statements mean for the candidates associated with him. Sanders Townsend addresses the second prong directly and rejects the association, saying she would advise candidates to disavow him. She does not evaluate the truth of the al-Qaeda comparison itself, and this label is not a finding on that question.
- Recorded on
- Published here
- People and groups discussed
- Hasan Piker
More from this case
Read the full caseJB Pritzker, asked whether Democrats should denounce Piker, redirects to stopping Trump
“You know, I'm not focused on the streamers and what they're saying. There's a whole lot of them, and they got a whole lot of views. I'm just saying that what I think we should be talking about and focused on is how do we stop Donald Trump in his tracks? How do we make sure that we're putting forward an agenda that really fights for the people who need it, which are the most vulnerable? The workers, you know, the middle class who really need someone to stand up for them. That's why I'm a Democrat. That's why the Democratic Party exists. That's what we should be focused on. You know, again, I'm not focused. I don't even want to talk about it. Hasan Piker doesn't mean anything to me or in my election.”Read statement
Francesca Fiorentini says Piker’s critics “made him the media figure for bad reasons” and would prefer he “do nothing at all”
“You made him the media figure for bad reasons. He was out here minding his damn business.” … “They would be absolutely okay with him utilizing his millions of followers to do nothing at all, because they would prefer that than for him to use the followers to actually boot out these do-nothing establishment Democrats”Read statement
Emma Vigeland says a “coordinated campaign” is what could make Piker “politically toxic” and faults Symone Sanders as an interviewer
“I mean, she didn’t listen to anything that he said. What she responded to was completely disconnected from the point he was making. I’m shocked at how poor of an interviewer she is and listener, if she was listening at all.” … “They feel like they have hours and hours of footage of [Hasan] sometimes saying edgy or inflammatory things by their own conservative standards, and they feel like this is a figure that we can define. And so when they act like, why are you going out there to campaign for candidates if you’re so politically toxic, as if this coordinated campaign against him wasn’t what would potentially make him politically toxic.”Read statement
Share or embed this statement
The embed keeps its attribution link to The Dispute Index. Credit the image to The Dispute Index and link to the statement page.
Cite this record
- Publisher
- The Dispute Index
- Title
- Symone Sanders Townsend tells Piker she would advise candidates to disavow him
- First published
- Last updated
- Permalink
- https://disputeindex.com/events/1024-symone-sanders-townsend-told-piker-to-his-face
Last updated marks the most recent saved version of this published statement.
The Dispute Index. "Symone Sanders Townsend tells Piker she would advise candidates to disavow him". First published: 2026-09-18. Last updated: 2026-09-25. https://disputeindex.com/events/1024-symone-sanders-townsend-told-piker-to-his-face