Trump calls Piker “a terrible liability” for Democrats
Donald TrumpPresident of the United States, answering a reporter’s question in the Oval Office
Asked in the Oval Office about the condemnations of Piker by leading Democrats and whether he considered Piker a liability to the party, Trump said he did, called him a communist, and said Piker’s statements were “so bad” that he could not understand Jewish voters supporting Democrats.
“I do. I think he’s a terrible liability. I think he’s got a power over some of these Democrats and he will vote that way. He’s a communist. There’s no question about it.”
Original video
Original post
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
Original video
About this source
Broadcast capture carrying the full Oval Office exchange, including the reporter’s question, which the widely circulated clips omit. The question is premised on the condemnations of Piker by leading Democrats during the week of the Axios Show interview; several of those condemnations — Fetterman, Dingell, Torres, Gottheimer and El-Sayed — are recorded separately in this case. The hour immediately preceding this broadcast on the same network was given over to the Axios interview, including Piker’s al-Qaeda, Iran and China answers. Quotation is from closed-caption text, which is transmitted in lower case and lightly imperfect; capitalisation has been normalised and nothing else altered.
Original post
About this source
The network’s own published rendering of the remarks, posted about half an hour after the exchange. It compresses the answer slightly, dropping the two “I think” qualifiers present in the broadcast captions, and omits the reporter’s question.
Before the quotation
Asked by a reporter: “Mr. President, many leading Democrats have condemned Hasan Piker. What is your take on him and do you think he’s a liability for Democrats?” The condemnations referred to followed the Axios Show interview; several are recorded separately in this case.
After the quotation
Trump continued that the Democrats “have a lot of communists” who can steer a party in a close election, then said of Piker: “he’s a guy who is very — his statements are so bad, how a Jewish person could vote for a Democrat is not even — if you think of it, it’s not even believable.” He named none of the interview’s specific claims.
How this statement is classified
The label describes this statement's response within the context above.
Why this label?
On Piker’s claims in the Axios Show interview, Trump condemns him, and does so in answer to a question expressly premised on the condemnations those claims produced. He goes on to say “his statements are so bad” before drawing a conclusion about Jewish voters, which is an evaluation of the statements rather than only of the speaker. The limitation should be read with it: Trump does not address the al-Qaeda comparison, the Iran answer or the China remarks by name, and the bulk of his reply concerns Piker’s influence within the Democratic Party rather than the truth of anything he said. It is recorded as a condemnation of the speaker and his statements in this dispute, not as a response to any particular claim.
- 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
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- Trump calls Piker “a terrible liability” for Democrats
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The Dispute Index. "Trump calls Piker “a terrible liability” for Democrats". First published: 2026-09-18. Last updated: 2026-09-25. https://disputeindex.com/events/1093-asked-in-the-oval-office-about-the-condemnations