Harold Ford Jr.
Role at the time: Democratic former member of the U.S. House of Representatives and Fox News contributor, as a rotating co-host of The Five
Statement summary
Immediately after the programme played Piker calling Mao Zedong “a great man of history,” Ford — a Democratic former congressman — said the views fell outside the range of any position held in either American party, said he was disappointed the programme was giving “this nonsense” airtime because Piker “almost tries to normalize it,” and said he knew of nobody in Congress who would say Iran should have a nuclear weapon or that Mao was a good man.
“These views are so outside the periphery of the most extreme views in either political party in all of politics in America. And the fact — in some ways I'm disappointed we've been giving this nonsense airtime, because he talks about it in ways, I think, to Joey's point, that he almost tries to normalize it. No Democrat, no Republican, no progressive Democrat or liberal Democrat in their right mind subscribes to any of this. I'm a conservative Democrat.”
Fox News' own recording of the twelve-minute opening segment of The Five for 18 September 2026, in which the panel discusses Hasan Piker's Axios Show interview. The segment plays the Axios clips of Piker on Iran's nuclear programme and on Mao Zedong, and the Oval Office exchange in which President Trump called Piker "a terrible liability." This locator carries Ford's reply immediately after the Mao clip is played. Ford posted this same segment to his own X account the evening it aired.. Speakers were identified from the broadcast itself: MacCallum names the panel in the opening line and hands to each of them by name, and each speaker was confirmed on camera at their locator. Fox's own @TheFive account attributes the closing lines of this passage to Jones, and Fox's page for the segment attributes "the Democratic Party has allowed itself to be infiltrated by influencers" to Conway.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Why we used this label
Relative to the case's fixed reference point — the claims Piker made in the Axios Show interview — Ford condemns. He calls the views “nonsense,” places them outside the range of any position held in either party, and objects that Piker's manner of expressing them normalises them. The closest competing label is explicitly_declines, because he twice says he wishes the programme would not discuss Piker at all; that loses because he answers substantively and at length before and after saying it, and his objection is to the airtime rather than to being asked.