Lara Trump: equating America with a terrorist organization is "totally outrageous"
Lara TrumpFox News host of "My View with Lara Trump" and former Republican National Committee co-chair, appearing as a panellist on "Outnumbered"
Lara Trump discusses Hasan Piker on Fox News's "Outnumbered," Sept. 17, 2026.
Excerpt from 3:00 to 4:37 of the Fox News video. DI added its logo in the corner.
Video: Fox News. Excerpt used for news reporting and commentary
Watch the full original video (opens in a new tab) (relevant passage: 11:20 clip. 00:00-00:35: Harris Faulkner's introduction; 01:21-01:40: extended clip of Piker's Axios answer; 01:46-01:54: Piker's post criticising the interview's presentation; 02:12-02:25: El-Sayed's statement read aloud; 03:03-04:35: Lara Trump; 04:48-06:24: Kennedy; 06:37 onward: Joey Jones.)
On Fox News's "Outnumbered" the day the interview was published, Lara Trump rejected Hasan Piker's comparison, saying it was totally outrageous to say America is anything like a terrorist organization. She argued that terrorists deliberately target civilians, citing the September 11 hijackings, and that war, while not perfect, is a different thing. She also dismissed Abdul El-Sayed's statement to Axios as damage control rather than a genuine rebuttal, said Piker's views should concern Democrats, and argued that Democrats who do not condemn him should be assumed to share his view. Her characterisations of Piker, of El-Sayed's motives and of the Trump administration's counterterrorism record are her own.
“The idea that Hasan Piker is the mouthpiece for the Democrats should concern them extensively. … He was doing damage control. He was trying to distance himself. … To say that America is anything like a terrorist organization is totally outrageous.”
Original video
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
Segment from Fox News's "Outnumbered" broadcast September 17, 2026, hosted by Harris Faulkner with panellists Donna Rotunno, Lara Trump, Kennedy and Joey Jones, reacting to Hasan Piker's Axios interview. The segment plays a longer excerpt of Piker's answer than the Axios article carries, including his claim that the terror also has "dramatic consequences on the home front," and reports that Piker afterwards accused Axios of clickbaiting a nuanced answer. Faulkner's introduction states that Abdul El-Sayed, who brought Piker onto his Michigan primary campaign, is now distancing himself. Quotations were checked against both the broadcast closed captions and an independent transcription of the audio; the two disagree in places and only sentences on which they agree are quoted. The closed captions garble several proper nouns ("Rotondo" for Rotunno, "hooties" for Houthis, "bag Daddy" for Baghdadi).
Watch the clip from this source at the top of the page.
Before the quotation
Host Harris Faulkner introduced the segment by saying Piker, "the man who said America deserved 9/11," was bashing America again less than a week after the 25th anniversary of the attacks, and that El-Sayed, who brought Piker onto his Michigan primary campaign, was now distancing himself. The programme played an extended clip of Piker's Axios answer and read El-Sayed's statement aloud.
After the quotation
Lara Trump went on to credit the Trump administration with counterterrorism successes and argued that until Democrats condemn Piker, voters should assume they agree with him. Faulkner then turned to panellist Kennedy, who said Piker "hates America with a blinding passion" and challenged him to make the same criticisms in countries run by the Taliban or the Houthis, and later to Joey Jones.
How this statement is classified
The label describes this statement's response within the context above.
Why this label?
Lara Trump expressly rejects it, calling the equation "totally outrageous" and drawing a distinction between deliberate targeting of civilians and the conduct of war. That is a direct condemnation of the claim under scrutiny, placing her opposite Piker (955) and alongside El-Sayed (956), who also rejects it. The closest competing label is “Challenged the characterization”, on the basis that much of her segment is about El-Sayed's response and about Democrats generally rather than the claim itself; it loses because she states a clear substantive evaluation of the comparison before turning to the political argument.
- Recorded on
- Published here
- People and groups discussed
- Hasan Piker, Abdul El-Sayed
More from this case
Read the full caseKulinski defends Piker's comparison of U.S. actions with terrorism
“everything that Hasan said there is 100 percent factually true.”Read statement
JB 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
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The Dispute Index. "Lara Trump: equating America with a terrorist organization is "totally outrageous"". First published: 2026-09-17. Last updated: 2026-09-22. https://disputeindex.com/events/966-on-fox-news-s-outnumbered-the-day-the