Symone D. Sanders Townsend
Role at the time: Co-host of MS NOW’s “Clock It” and former senior adviser to the Biden-Harris campaign
Statement summary
MS NOW host Symone D. Sanders Townsend rejected the analogy Piker had drawn, saying his example equated people protesting the police with Hamas, and citing her own experience protesting the police.
“I’m going to let Eugene move on, but I just want to note, 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, but we can move on.”
Full 80-minute episode of MS NOW’s “Clock It,” hosted by Eugene Daniels and Symone D. Sanders Townsend, uploaded September 17, 2026. Quotations here were checked against the published audio rather than taken from secondary reports. That matters: NewsBusters rendered the passage as “this is intentionally provocative, but it’s also not untrue,” but the audio shows Piker was cut off mid-sentence after “but it’s also not—” by a host asking “do you believe that?” The word “untrue” is not spoken at that point. The New York Post’s account, which omits it, matches the recording. The New York Post describes the exchange as taking place on Wednesday, September 16, so the recording may predate publication.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Why we used this label
On Sanders Townsend disputes the analogy through which Piker defends the comparison, rather than condemning the comparison itself as a whitewashing of terrorism. She names what she takes the analogy to imply, rejects it on her own authority as someone who has protested the police, and declines to pursue it further. That is a challenge to his characterisation, not a substantive verdict on the Hamas-Israel comparison, which is why “Condemned” overstates it. She is a host, but this is her own attributable evaluation rather than an interview question, which is what distinguishes it from her co-host’s questioning.