Fetterman Challenges El-Sayed and Piker, Offering $50,000 for a Rally To ‘Explain’ Why America ‘Deserved’ 9/11

Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, is calling out his party’s nominee for Senate in Michigan, Dr. Abdulrahman “Abdul” El-Sayed. The senator is offering the candidate $50,000 to rally with a prominent supporter, Hasan Piker, on 9/11 to “explain” why America “deserved” the attacks.Mr. Fetterman issued his challenge Wednesday on Fox News Channel, calling Dr. El-Sayed “a socialist” who “said in an interview” that he “absolutely loves Sharia law” and “actually has support for Hamas and Iran.” Dr. El-Sayed has compared Sharia law to Catholic canon law, condemned Hamas for what he called “war crimes,” and on Fox News recently said he would “never defend the Iranian regime.” There are “a lot of other things,” Mr. Fetterman added, that he finds troubling and “crazy” about Dr. El-Sayed, citing the Michigander’s past backing for defunding the police.To get Mr. Fetterman’s $50,000, Dr. El-Sayed would have “to do a rally with Hasan Piker on” Friday’s anniversary of 9/11 and “explain to people why America ‘deserved’ that 25 years ago.” The senator offered “another $50,000 if you do a rally with your sister,” Eman Abdelhadi, “who celebrated publicly after the massacre of 10/7.”Some Democrats have called for Mr. Fetterman to be ejected from the party for these broadsides. Yet he thinks it’s the socialists who ought to go, echoing the conservative Georgia Democrat, Senator Zell Miller. “Nobody,” he told CNN in 2001 of pressure to switch parties, “is going to lure or drive me out of this old house I’ve lived in all my life.”Streamer Hasan Piker, left, and Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive candidate in the Democratic primary for Senate in Michigan take a selfie on April 7, 2026, at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. AP/Julia Demaree NikhinsonMiller said he was “here first,” and now there were “strangers” in the basement.” Today, Mr. Fetterman sees socialists as the uninvited guests. Dr. El-Sayed, he said, “has been campaigning strong with Hasan Piker,” who “absolutely despises Israel and Jews.” He urged Democrats to “divorce” from far-leftists and return to “the way we’ve always been.”In 2019 on the video streaming platform Twitch, Mr. Piker said, “America deserved 9/11. Fuck it. I’m saying it.” In October 2024, Congressman Ritchie Torres, Democrat of New York, wrote a letter to Twitch’s parent company, Amazon, dubbing Mr. Piker “the poster child for the post-October 7th outbreak of antisemitism.”Mr. Piker, Mr. Torres wrote, “demonized Orthodox Jews as ‘inbred’ and “dehumanized a Jewish man as a ‘bloodthirsty pig-dog.’” The streamer said that “it doesn’t matter if rape happened on October 7th,” after first calling the atrocities “rape fantasies.” He also posted a photo depicting himself as the USSR’s first dictator, Vladimir Lenin, reincarnated. Interviewed later by his uncle, Cenk Uygur, Mr. Piker called his 9/11 remarks “inappropriate” and said he “should’ve used more precise and better” words. While this has been described as an “apology,” his only stated regret was presenting an “opportunity to the right” who he alleged “are 100 percent responsible for all the bloodshed.”Mr. Piker later told Reuters that “I used imprecise language in 2019 and immediately apologized for using the word ‘deserved’ when talking about the concept of blowback.” He added that “no one deserves to be a victim to a terror attack.”Mr. Fetterman is “encouraging El-Sayed” to “remind everybody in Michigan who you are and the kind of people that you stand with.” In audio leaked from a meeting in July, Dr. El-Sayed bristled at the senator. “Ideally,” he said, “you put one ogre on a pike and then everyone else gets the message.”Mr. Fetterman responded by declaring himself “Senator Shrek,” referring to the beloved, animated ogre. “I dare you to continue to campaign with people like Hasan Piker,” he said on Fox last month. He’s now putting his money where his mouth is and, as of this writing, neither man has responded.In April, Politico offered Dr. El-Sayed the opportunity to disavow Mr. Piker at an event during Michigan’s primary. He dismissed the question as a “gotcha game” and “cancel culture.” He was not, he said, “here to disavow people’s views,” and added, the outlet reported, that “it’s ‘critical’ that Democrats embrace Piker.”Last month on “Meet the Press,” Dr. El-Sayed called Mr. Piker’s comments “dumb,” but again dismissed the issue as “gotcha politics” relying on things “taken out of context.” On Thursday’s “Straight Shooter” podcast, he again evaded when the host, Stephen A. Smith, asked if there was “anything” Mr. Piker “could say that would make you publicly disavow him.”In the interview where Mr. Fetterman laid down his double-dare, the senator warned that “the Democratic Party is becoming an orgy of socialism,” giving Dr. El-Sayed and Mr. Piker a political eviction notice. “Senator Shrek” lived in this house first, and he won’t vacate for strangers who are more comfortable condemning America and Israel than terrorists.

Fetterman Challenges El-Sayed and Piker, Offering $50,000 for a Rally To ‘Explain’ Why America ‘Deserved’ 9/11

Fetterman Challenges El-Sayed and Piker, Offering $50,000 for a Rally To ‘Explain’ Why America ‘Deserved’ 9/11

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