Kellyanne Conway
Role at the time: Republican pollster and former senior counselor to the president, as a co-host of Fox News' The Five
Statement summary
Answering Ford's claim that nobody in either party entertains Piker's views, Conway named Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Senate candidate campaigning alongside Piker, said he would not disclaim him, and argued Democrats should distance themselves from Piker as some had from Graham Platner. She said the party had allowed itself to be “infiltrated by influencers and streamers” and that the Democratic National Committee pays influencers rather than economists or foreign policy experts.
“So, Harold, respectfully, I know at least one person who's willing to entertain this. His name is Abdul El-Sayed. He's palling around with this guy. He will not disclaim him and the crazy by-the-moment things that he's saying. And I think that Hasan Piker the person is actually even less important than Hasan Piker the performance artist now, because it represents how difficult it is now and will be in 2028 for Democrats to transition from shock-the-conscience crazy talk in the primaries to trying to present themselves as reasonable and semi-capitalist and connected to voters, to everyday voters. The way that some responsible Democrats wanted to distance themselves and their party from Graham Platner and his Nazi tattoo and his abuse of women and his adultery, I think that people should be doing that now with Hasan Piker. Here's the problem with Piker: the Democratic Party has allowed itself to be infiltrated by influencers and streamers and to live online.”
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 Conway's reply to Ford, which turns from Piker to El-Sayed's refusal to disavow him. Fox titled its page for this segment after the closing sentence of this passage.. 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 — Conway condemns. She characterises what Piker is saying as “the crazy by-the-moment things” and “shock-the-conscience crazy talk,” and the Platner comparison treats his statements as disqualifying rather than merely unhelpful. The closest competing label is challenges_characterization, which loses because she is not disputing how Piker's remarks have been described; her argument is that a candidate who will not disavow them is the more consequential problem, which extends the condemnation rather than redirecting it.