Khanna Defends Plans to Appear Again on Socialist Streamer Piker's Show

Rep. Ro Khanna said Sunday he would return to socialist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker's show despite a growing Democratic revolt against the commentator, framing the question not as one of values but of electoral survival.

Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press" with host Kristen Welker, Khanna warned that the impulse to avoid platforms like Piker's would prove politically catastrophic. "The lesson of the last election is we've got to be out there," Khanna said. "We've got to engage. It's a complex, messy, multiracial democracy. I will defend my views, but the people who are saying, Don't engage, will cost us future elections." Khanna also condemned Piker's past comments that he views as antisemitic, drawing a line between the platform's reach and the streamer's rhetoric.

Piker, known online as "HasanAbi," has built one of Twitch's largest political audiences, with over 2.5 million followers. Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on July 25, 1991, and raised partly in Istanbul, Turkey, the Rutgers University graduate launched his media career at The Young Turks, the progressive outlet co-founded by his uncle, Cenk Uygur. He moved to Twitch in 2018, and during the 2020 election night his stream peaked at over 100,000 simultaneous viewers.

The controversy fueling the intraparty dispute is substantial. Piker has referred to ultra-Orthodox Jews as "inbred," compared Israelis to the Ku Klux Klan, described Hamas as "a thousand times better" than Israel, and reportedly said "America deserved 9/11." After the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre, he dismissed widespread reports of sexual violence as "rape fantasies," and in February 2026 appeared at the Web Summit conference in Doha, Qatar, where he alleged that Israel's conduct played a meaningful role in the attacks.

The Democratic feud broke into the open in late March 2026 after Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed announced Piker would join him at campaign rallies in the state. Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois, who chairs the moderate New Democratic Coalition and co-chairs the Congressional Jewish Caucus, called Piker "an unapologetic antisemite." Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York wrote directly to Twitch CEO Daniel Clancy to declare that "Hasan Piker has emerged as the poster child for the post-October 7th outbreak of antisemitism in America," also labeling him "an apologist not only for 10/7 but also for 9/11, compounding antisemitism with anti-Americanism." Michigan's Sen. Elissa Slotkin and Senate candidate Rep. Haley Stevens also condemned the partnership.

Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, a potential 2028 presidential contender, declined to appear on Piker's stream. Through an aide, his office said: "Mr. Piker's terrible comments about Jewish people, 9/11, and other areas aren't the kinds of conversations Cory participates in and he will not be joining him on his stream." A Politico survey of 14 potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidates found only three willing to appear on the channel.

Centrist think tank Third Way amplified the pressure in March 2026 when Jim Cowan and Matt Bennett published a Wall Street Journal op-ed citing four specific Piker comments as antisemitic. ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt also weighed in against Democratic engagement with the streamer.

Khanna is not without prominent company in his willingness to appear on the show. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, Sen. Bernie Sanders, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer have all appeared on Piker's channel. El-Sayed defended his outreach strategy directly: "Maybe it's because politicians don't talk to folks in the places they actually are, or worse, purposely exclude them." For Khanna, the political calculation rests on a single uncomfortable fact: Piker commands millions of young, predominantly male viewers, precisely the demographic Democrats failed to hold in the last election cycle.