In This Episode
Democrats and Republicans may seem worlds apart politically, but both parties are running into a similar problem – getting pushed into uncomfortable positions. Less than a week after election wins across the country, it only took 7 Democratic Senators and one Independent to wipe away the feeling of victory and instead cave to Trump and the GOP’s bullying on the government shutdown. Republicans, however, have their own problems as exposed by the rift over Tucker Carlson embracing far-right antagonist Nick Fuentes. This week, Alex is joined by Zohran Mamdani’s political strategist, Morris Katz, and twitch streamer and political commentator, Hasan Piker, to break down how politicians can find their backbone again.
TRANSCRIPT
Alex Wagner: Hi, everyone. On election night last Tuesday, the country saw a full on blue wave, a series of dramatic wins for Democrats and significant losses for conservatives. So it’s kind of hard to believe that just a few days later, Democrats in Congress folded.
[clip of Andy Kim]: What just happened in the Senate chamber was an absolute disgrace. I can’t stress it enough. I’m just so pissed off at just what’s going to happen to so many people.
Alex Wagner: You just heard New Jersey Senator Andy Kim’s reaction on CNN. The government shutdown is over and the Democratic strategy in all of this. Questionable. The health care subsidies Democrats were fighting to extend are still very much said to expire at the end of this year. And those tax credits would have prevented millions of people like Lindsay, who we spoke to last week, from paying two to three times what they currently do for health insurance. By way of an explanation for this, Democrats who defected to end the shutdown pointed to Donald Trump’s punishment of federal workers and people who take airplanes and also the 42 million Americans who receive food stamps. Now, Democrats say the fight on healthcare isn’t over and maybe it isn’t. Maybe voters will blame Republicans for the turmoil and take their anger to the 2026 voting booth. But no matter how you look at it, the Democrats, the party in Congress blinked. In the middle of a standoff with the biggest bully in the country, Donald Trump. So what does that say about the Democratic Party and its leadership, and what happens in future fights against that very same opponent? [music plays] I’m Alex Wagner, and this week on Runaway Country, we’re gonna talk about bullies. In an age of extremism, what does it mean to have real backbone? Democrats caved to the country’s authoritarian and chief, Donald Trump, while a good share of Trump’s own party is now apparently submitting to Nazis. And nobody knows that better than socialist and Twitch streamer, political commentator and Gen Z mascot, Hasan Piker, who devotes a fair amount of his day to calling out the bigotry within the ranks of the Republican Party and who knows a thing or two about bully culture.
Hasan Piker: If you have developed a movement off of shitting on every marginalized group, and that is your North Star as it is the Republicans, why wouldn’t they also do that to the Jews?
Alex Wagner: But first, I am sitting down with Morris Katz, Zoran Mamdani’s 26-year-old political advisor. Morris was one of the key players in Mamdiani’s landslide victory last week, particularly among younger voters. He has been right in the middle of the fight between the Democratic establishment and its new wave of insurgents, and he remains in the midst of that fight. Morris Katz is also an advisor to Graham Platner’s Senate campaign. Whose race in Maine has not been free of, well, all kinds of controversy. Morris and I chatted about why the Democrats caved this week, what it means to have backbone in the age of Trump, and what the next generation of Democrats is going to demand of its leaders, whether they like it or not. Morris Katz, it’s a thrill. Thank you and welcome to Runaway Country.
Morris Katz: Thanks so much for having me, Alex.
Alex Wagner: So much of this moment politically feels like it’s a story of backbone and who has it and who doesn’t. And I want to start with the shutdown or the unshut down or the cave or whatever you want to call it this week. Just give me your initial reaction to, you know, the news on Sunday night that eight Democrats had freelanced across the aisle.
Morris Katz: Well, yeah, one, I think the kind of freelance thing is, it’s amusing watching Chuck Schumer suddenly decide that this is the moment he doesn’t actually control the caucus after an entire brand of decades built on his group—
Alex Wagner: That rowdy Jeanne Shaheen.
Morris Katz: Yes, exactly.
Alex Wagner: Can’t control her anymore.
Morris Katz: It’s, yeah, insane. And my favorite shutdown point, I think you actually are the person who said this, and I’m stealing this from you now, quoting it back to you, which I’m sure makes great content [laughter] but was the like, why aren’t we owning the shutdown?
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Morris Katz: Like, we should have just from the start been like, yes, we are shutting the government down to keep your healthcare costs low, to keep you enrolled in healthcare and owned it. And from there, immediately we were in like an apologetic stance and that’s no way to start a fight. And I think further, it kind of exists in this role. And I’ve been thinking about this a lot of. We need to change who we are as a party in the way we think about government. It’s like we still are in the era of big government is over phase and are apologetic about anything that government’s doing. And then when you go into these conversations, it’s like our entire framing is how can we delay government harm? How can we, you know, what’s the least we can do to hurt working people instead of any kind of active vision for how these conversations should take place? This should be a conversation of what can we do to transform the lives of people if we want to talk about SNAP benefits Let’s talk about a plan to lift everyone up from having needing SNAP benefits in the first place the idea that we like are winning something by potentially delaying and increasing a little bit of accountability to score electoral points on people losing their health care is indicative of a party without a vision.
Alex Wagner: Well, I mean, I think you could also like just term it in really schoolyard dynamics, which is like they’ve allowed themselves to be bullied into defense. Like it’s just you were part of you are part of one campaign and you have been part of two campaigns that are remarkably on offense. Right. Zohran Mamdani and Graham Platner and are kind of unapologetic in their stances, in all of their politics. And, you know, just as characters on the stage, there’s very little. Kind of kneeling, if you will. I do have to ask you, though, given your CV. You helped run the campaign of John Fetterman, who was one of the eight who was an architect of this cave. And I wonder if you have thoughts about that and whether there’s anything you can tell us about sort of… How you look at that candidacy and the candidates you’re working for or have worked for in the recent past.
Morris Katz: I think that John Fetterman ran to be the 51st vote. That was like the core line, the 51 vote to do all of these great things, not the 51 vote to like side with Republicans to take health care away from people. And I think for a variety of reasons, like I can’t speak to what’s happened in governing as I worked on the campaign, it feels like the governing has looked very different from the campaign. And I think that at the end of the day, Senator Fetterman is still someone who was a politician before running for office, who was not necessarily accepted by the political class, but had that and his DNA and a complicated baggage and relationships with the political system and status quo politicians. And so I think there’s like, I think the similarities between Graham Platner and John Fetterman kind of ended them both having tattoos and occasionally wearing sweatshirts.
Alex Wagner: Yeah, right. But do you worry at all, though, that it’s a it’s not a function of inherent sort of like, it’s not it’s, not a backbone that you’re born with. It’s one that develops as a result of your surroundings and your inputs. And like, once you get into actual governance, that atrophies, I mean, do you do is, I guess it’s like nobody go. I mean I guess maybe Fetterman went in there like I’m going to be the 51st vote. And like that probably means I’m going to be. You know, at some points, I’m going to be pulled to the right. I just a very few people go in there to be moderates.
Morris Katz: Yeah, I think that’s right. I do think that like there’s the problem and I think everyone sees this when you see these politicians going and they spend all day once they’re in Washington just meeting with lobbyists, meeting with donors, meeting—
Alex Wagner: Or meeting with each other. I mean, even if they’re not taking, you know, money from lobbyists, they’re spending a lot of time jabbering at each other.
Morris Katz: Absolutely. It’s like it is, Dan Osborn likes to say the Senate’s a country club of millionaires who just do what billionaires tell them. And I think that that’s absolutely correct. I think part of what we need more of is we need more reluctant candidates. Like I always say, you know, I’m like, if you’re someone who wants to be in the United States Senate, you have something wrong with you. You should feel like this is the last thing I want to do, but I feel an obligation to go do it. And I think that kind of helps with that framing of if you go into the Senate kind of worshiping the altar of whatever the, you kind of institution of the Senate is, then you’re very destined to fall into those traps you’re laying.
Alex Wagner: Ah.
Morris Katz: If you’re somebody who’s going into it with the perspective of like, these are a bunch of fucking losers and I’m embarrassed to be here, but I’m going to do my then I think we’re starting using something to work with.
Alex Wagner: God, that’s so interesting because it’s like, yeah, these are a bunch of losers, which is kind of Trump’s attitude to what towards the American public, but certainly towards his own party. Right. Like you guys are a lot of losers. You fucking need me and you’re welcome for everything I’m giving you. And it sounds like you think Democrats need to be less concerned about sort of being offensive and being, you know, disgusted at the dynamics within their own party.
Morris Katz: I mean, we have a party of people who like didn’t sit at the cool kids table and it comes through and we’re haunted by it every single day in Washington. And then it’s like, they now kind of think that this might be it and so they’re just, we’re just happy to be here kind of mentality verse what the approach should be, which is like, this is a horrible place and I’m going to do everything in my power to change it, change the way Washington functions, change who we listen to, change the way we talk, change what we fight for.
Alex Wagner: Um, I want to ask you specifically about your, you’re like right in the thick of all of this, right? And you were a senior advisor to the Mamdani campaign. You guys are right at the crosshairs of the democratic establishment being, you know, proving their own irrelevance. It took so long to get leadership, democratic leadership in Congress and democratic leadership from New York state to come on board. Did that matter to you or you were like, oh yeah, we’re just, we’re not being kept up at night due to a lack of a Hakeem Jeffries endorsement.
Morris Katz: I was certainly not, I was losing sleep for a lot of reasons. The lack of a Hakeem Jeffries endorsement was not one of them. I think we saw, and this is like a broader thing that applies to a lot of the way we talk about these different races and the progressive wing of the party, is in our polling, Zohran was more popular in a general election electorate than a lot these individuals who the kind of pundit class was obsessed with how they were gonna move or not. And when you see the same thing with the way Bernie Sanders is talked about with the AOC is talked when you look at the actual polling, they’re far more popular. And even like, you know, it’s been floated, the concept of like, oh, leadership standing out because Zohran’s a liability in swing districts, Zohran is more popular than the very people making those decisions to not want to be tagged with him. Like if someone’s going to want to run an effective attack ad in a swing district, they’re going to run it tying the candidate to Chuck Schumer, not tying the candid to Zohran Mamdani via Chuck Schumar. Um, and I think there’s kind of this myth. That’s really just people telling on themselves for their discomfort with a candidate that doesn’t reflect the will of the people. But we also saw in the Democratic primary a historic turnout, a historic margin of victory in the face of a Democratic establishment that decided they were comfortable embracing a sexual predator who covered up the murder of a bunch of seniors, yet a Muslim democratic socialist was a step too far.
Alex Wagner: I got it. I mean, we’re looking in the past with Mamdani. He obviously won by a large margin and is going to be the next mayor of New York City. You’re also working on the Graham Platner campaign. And when we talk about Democrats being free to be themselves, you know, being unabashed in the mistakes they’ve made and embracing the mistakes they’ve make and, you know presenting themselves to the American public warts all as sort of like indicator of conviction. My question to you is, is there a line? Like, do you, first of all, can you be too precious about a Nazi tattoo?
Morris Katz: Well, when he got it, you know, thinking it was a skull-and-crossed bones tattoo, and obviously there’s been a lot that’s kind of, you know, discourse that’s taken place around it. And he’s gotten the tattoo covered up and, you know, apologized for Reddit statements and any hurt that could have come from the tattoo. But I think the kind of where I come down on this is I think Graham Platner would be an unbelievable U.S. Senator. I think he will be an unbelievable U S. Senator, I think is a voice we need in the party. And I also think we need to move past the place where someone like me should be allowed to decide if Graham Platner is electable. And I think we have this like backroom, this culture of backroom politics in the party, where it tends to be five assholes in Washington, deciding who’s electable, who’s a good candidate in Maine. And like, why are we going to let the same people who picked Sarah Gideon to lose by 12 points tell us who our nominees should be this time? Like that’s an insane theory. And if people think it’s unelectable then it’s this good thing that we have democratic primaries where voters can tell us what they think about it and the idea of it’s just to me it’s so deeply condescending to voters for Washington to try to dictate electability concerns and that that’s where so much of it is coming from.
Alex Wagner: Yeah, for people who are unfamiliar, Janet Mills, the governor of the state, is the pick of Chuck Schumer and much of the Democratic establishment because they think she’s a formidable fighter, which with all due respect, she did, you know, come for Trump inside the White House and said, I’ll see you in court. And that was a bad-ass moment. And it’s in a campaign ad, but is seen, you, know, that race is equally seen as one of sort of like the centrist established moderates versus the upstart the insurgent and someone with a complicated past if not a checkered past and I guess you know you say That the Democratic primary voters should be the ones to decide but do you think we are at a moment right now where Democrats generally need to and can get more comfortable with a offense both like the the posture and being offended?
Morris Katz: Absolutely. I think people are looking and craving authenticity and there’s just more transparency required than ever before in running for office. And no one is perfect. And no-one expects authenticity to mean that someone has never made a mistake, that someone has never said something they don’t regret. And especially as we have a new generation that’s going to start running where so much of it is going to be online, so much it’s going to be captured somewhere on some platform. And I think people want to see themselves reflected in those seeking to represent them. And people are self-aware enough to know that they too have said things they regret, that they, too, have gone through dark periods. You know, Graham has talked about a lot of this in the context of his PTSD, in the contest of his depression, this being not the person he is anymore. And people see that, and they see, you know, whether they said the same things or got the same tattoo, they see a sense of, they see their own themselves in that, the things that they wish they hadn’t said. Their own moments of struggle. And I think that’s a politics we can all be excited about, particularly when every editorial page wants to write 90 papers on how do we win back young men who are the right is taking on online platforms and other places. And Graham is literally this person who was in those places, who was on those Reddit threads, who’s come out the other side, who’s uniquely equipped to communicate on these things, to be a messenger to bring those people back. And we shouldn’t be apologetic about… Having candidates who’ve evolved, who’ve changed, and who can build the very coalitions we claim we want to.
Alex Wagner: I guess I wonder whether that’s, I mean, so you’re saying voters crave authenticity, they crave a shared experience or people who can speak to the lives that they’ve lived. But I also feel like it’s a requirement in the age of Trump, right? Like if you’re gonna punch the bully in the nose, you gotta know how to take a swing to use a very heavy-handed metaphor. You know what I mean? You got to be able to just like live with the consequences of your action and not feel actions and not feeling apologetic about them in order to take on what is the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime and probably in, you know, modern American history.
Morris Katz: Absolutely. I think Graham has, to stick with our schoolyard bully metaphor, which we’re really leaning into here, is I think like, Graham is someone who would kick the shit out of Donald Trump and would not do it to make friends, would not do it… Because he thought he could not get in trouble, would do it because he that’s the right thing to do. And I think that that’s what people can, that authenticity comes through. And just the reality is most people who are like that are also not people who, when they were seven, thought that they wanted to be a U.S. Senator.
Alex Wagner: Right.
Morris Katz: And so we just need to decide, like, are we going to allow the U.S. Senate and our party to continue to be run by people who were too busy planning their presidential campaigns to sit at the cool kids table, or are we okay having some, like real people who actually have lived real lives run for office, knowing that that doesn’t mean everything’s been perfect?
Alex Wagner: Right, who weren’t trying to sit at the cool kids table who were like outside, I don’t know, setting cars on fire or something. [laughter] Would you do that in high school? I don’t know. Um, I, I just, I wonder in the context of the shutdown and the fallout out of the shutdown, what do you think needs to happen inside democratic ranks? I think you told the New York Times that, um, the general election campaign for Mamdani was a story of a constant friction between trying to unite a party and not lose a populist edge. I just- I wonder if there’s just not, that there’s an inherent contradiction in all of that and whether these things can all exist under the same tent. You know, like, do you think Chuck Schumer is going to be the minority leader for much longer? Do you, I mean, like how do you, how do have a group of people who are so loathed to be confrontational that they will not sacrifice anything that they, I mean, Dick Durbin voted to end the shutdown. He’s leaving the Senate, right? Like it would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to just sit on the guidelines, right? How do you have a party that can be at once aggressive and authentic and truly itself, warts and all, and a sort of a governing structure that is steeped in right and tradition and moderation?
Morris Katz: So like, if I was able to control the powers at the [?], which I now in some ways, I guess, infamously cannot, I would have had, I would’ve called Bernie and Elizabeth Warren and AOC and these people who can draw huge crowds and said, let’s take this tour on the road together as a united democratic front and talk about what is on the line with this shutdown and make our case to the American public. And… I would have, you know, if I’m them, I would’ve asked for Chuck Schumer to be there, for Dick Durbin to be there, and see, like, control the narrative. And I think what happened here is you saw no one step up other than, like Senator Sanders tried a few, tried. But there was no coherent message unifying the Democrats in their opposition, which makes it so easy to fold when there’s nothing kind of holding you up. And instead, if we were having rallies with 40,000 people every three days talking not the Republican assault on health care. Then you have a party united and like one thing politicians love is big crowds and tv cameras and when you have 50,000 people chanting you know don’t end the shutdown or whatever—
Alex Wagner: Pr stand tall, or stand up, yeah.
Morris Katz: Like, that gives the backbone, but because we treat our most popular leaders like they’re plights on the party, then we leave ourselves devoid of any vision or of any backbone.
Alex Wagner: They can still do that. I mean, by the way, the healthcare issue hasn’t been resolved and maybe it’s not Chuck Schumer who’s out there but I’m of the mind that they should be going on the road and they should talking about Trump and his cruelty and sadism as it concerns the health and welfare and financial stability of the American people like all the time. [both speaking] They have a very practical example when they get their healthcare premium bills next January. So it’s not like the story ends.
Morris Katz: No, and I think it’s also something they don’t understand about modern media, where those rallies aren’t just rallies that then go on cable news and broadcast news and show mass support for the message, it becomes 50,000 different hits. Everyone in their phone has a phone, clips it, it’s on TikTok, it on Instagram, it in the algorithm, it’s going viral, people are seeing it everywhere and you create an echo chamber of your message instead of like the DC messaging strategy which is like, you know, give a press conference every day and take like a weak swing at Trump with like, you know and hand out some fact sheets to the like, you know DC press corps which isn’t exactly the kind of a meet the moment strategy of persuasion.
Alex Wagner: Maybe they need to do like a health care premiums like scavenger hunt. I’m just borrowing from Mamdani tactic during the twenty twenty five campaign. Morris Katz explaining to Democrats what the fuck is wrong with them and what the fuck they need to start doing, we’ll see if they like take you up on any of it.
Morris Katz: They can join us at the cool kids table Alex.
Alex Wagner: Yeah, I’m not I’m definitely like I’m in detention probably if we’re talking about where everybody That’s not true. I was a nerd I was probably in study hall not even eating just starving and eating the eating the the food of academia whatever that means. [laughter] I’m, sorry that this was so filled with um school yard metaphors Morris, but you know I appreciate you playing ball. [laughter]
Morris Katz: Absolutely. Thanks so much, Alex.
Alex Wagner: Thanks for coming on the show.
Morris Katz: I appreciate it.
Alex Wagner: When we come back, we are going to put all of this in context with Hasan Piker and ask if anyone’s ready to punch the bullies in the nose, proverbially speaking.
[AD BREAK]
Alex Wagner: As the Democratic Party managed some internal combustion this week, the Republican Party was experiencing a watershed moment of its own. Tucker Carlson, the Wizard of Oz for the GOP, who hosts one of the most popular conservative podcasts in the country, had far right activist, Nick Fuentes on a show for a very friendly interview.
[clip of Tucker Carlson]: I’m sorry I called you gay, by the way, but I think I’m just too old or something. I’m like, why isn’t anyone married? You tell me, why aren’t people married?
[clip of Nick Fuentes]: Well, I mean, honestly, it’s the women, the women are extremely liberal. No one talks about that. They’re increasingly they do, especially after the last election. There’s a 45 point difference between men and women. The men are extremely conservative. Increasingly the women are extremely liberal.
[clip of Tucker Carlson]: What are they liberal, on what issues? Like, what does that mean? Liberal.
[clip of Nick Fuentes]: Oh, on, they’re very feminist.
[clip of Tucker Carlson]: Like actually?
[clip of Nick Fuentes]: Extremely feminist. Yeah.
[clip of Tucker Carlson]: They don’t believe that. Do they?
[clip of Nick Fuentes]: I think they do.
[clip of Tucker Carlson]: Really?
[clip of Nick Fuentes]: Absolutely, yes.
[clip of Tucker Carlson]: How can you believe that?
Alex Wagner: Nobody knows the inside of a woman’s brain like Nick Fuentes. Now, for those of you fortunate enough not to be familiar with this man, here’s just a taste.
[clip of Nick Fuentes]: Hitler was a pedophile and kind of a pagan. It’s like, well, he was also really fucking cool. You know, we’re not with the Jim Crow stuff. Who cares? Oh, and a drink out of a different water fountain. Big fucking deal. People would say, are you against all immigration or just for non-white people? And you’d say, no, no. I think we should have no immigration from anywhere. Even from what? It’s just enough. And now it’s kind of like, no, we could use some more white people.
Alex Wagner: If you find those views appalling, then you may be surprised to learn that the president of the Heritage Foundation think tank, which is a pillar of the Republican establishment, the president resolutely and repeatedly defended Tucker Carlson for platforming Fuentes.
[news clip]: The Heritage Foundation didn’t become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians.
Alex Wagner: All of this didn’t so much set off as it did expose a schism within the Republican Party between those outraged that a neo-Nazi is making moves towards becoming a legitimate voice in the movement and everyone else who is either scared of getting on Tucker Carlson’s bad side or actually agrees with him and Nick Fuentes. Our second guest Hasan Piker believes that anti-Semitism and maybe bigotry more broadly is intrinsic to the goals of the right. And a party that has shown a weakness for strongmen and a real desire to platform bullies is now getting mighty friendly with an ideology that only a few years ago was synonymous with pure evil. Here’s my conversation with Hasan Piker at Crooked Con in Washington, D.C. [music plays] Thanks for doing this.
Hasan Piker: Of course, thank you for having me.
Alex Wagner: Um, I’ve been thinking about you in the context of, uh, some of the news we’ve gotten recently, particularly around, I don’t know if you’ve been following what’s going on at the Heritage Foundation. And—
Hasan Piker: Oh, I’ve been following. I’m, ooh, it’s incredible.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Hasan Piker: I love right-wing in fighting. This is the most dangerous type of right-winger in fighting though, because it does seem like it’s the inevitable forces of anti-Semitism are winning.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Hasan Piker: But, you know, it still, I’m still gonna let them fight a position right now.
Alex Wagner: Seems bad. Let’s let them stay at it.
Hasan Piker: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good, good. Keep having these arguments.
Alex Wagner: You were on NPR talking about just how much Nazism and anti-Semitism is legitimately sort of like organizing principle on the far right with younger white conservatives. And I kind of wonder between what’s happening in heritage, the text messages between young Republican leaders talking about Hitler, Trump’s nominees saying he has, you know, Nazi tendencies. Can you like, first of all, I’m sure you feel validated—
Hasan Piker: Oh, I thought you were talking about J.D. Vance for a second.
Alex Wagner: Well, it’s hard to know.
Hasan Piker: Are you talking about R.F.K. Jr.? Trump has Nazi tendencies? Because they both did that.
Alex Wagner: Can you talk a little bit about what you think that’s about?
Hasan Piker: I mean, yeah, this is like the most principled maximalist position of reactionary politics is always inevitably going to arrive at fascism. That’s what it is. If we are to assume that the left flank position in this country in its most like aggressive version or its logical conclusion is like something resembling socialism on socialist principles, even though the Democratic Party is a liberal party, and I think it is inherently antagonistic towards that the maximalist position of right-wing forces is inevitably going to be fascism. Fascism restores stability and order without actually harming the material pecking order in terms of the class structure that exists under capitalism, the wealthy continue to retain their wealth, of course, as long as they don’t end up in this expansionist endless militarism and then they end up failing by force, as we’ve seen. But that is that is at the heart of fascism, and that has always been at the heart of the Republican Party. And for years and years, I think people said, oh, you’re exaggerating, oh, you’re exaggerated. And the reality of the matter is that that is the fundamental organizing principle of white supremacy. And that has played a major role in the Republican party. So it was an inevitability that we arrive at this moment. And so that’s where we’re at now.
Alex Wagner: So you’re saying it’s kind of foundational to conservatism, right?
Hasan Piker: Oh for sure.
Alex Wagner: And maybe has been for decades, but it feels like this current iteration of especially young people embracing it, maybe the gateway drug was like, own the lips, say the most offensive thing you can, which is like praise for Hitler, praise for Nazis, see if you can get a reaction. But what seems now clear is that it’s not just about owning the lips anymore. It really is about a fundamental, like. Interest in, if not actual embrace, of the Third Reich.
Hasan Piker: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: eFirst of all, what do you think the conversation around that should be from progressives and Democrats who are, I think, rightfully alarmed about a sizable portion of the Republican Party being enamored of Hitler?
Hasan Piker: Um, so this is, this is something I’ve been ringing the alarm bells on for quite a while. I think, uh, my, my thing was like any Republican staffer under the age of 35 is usually going to be a Groyper or, you know, going to have at least like some kind of sympathies towards like [both speaking]historical fascist movements, right? Um, and we saw that with like the Ron DeSantis campaign, for example, like Ron DeSantis was supposed to be the establishment Republican answer to Donald Trump and Trumpism in general. They were fearful that he was. Causing there to be some electoral defeats when he was on the ticket, right? Or at least was like associated with a ticket. And the Koch brothers, Koch brother, and the rest of the establishment on the Republican side tried to find an answer in Ron DeSantis. It was a failure, but even then, his campaign was staffed with young Republicans that were putting the Sonnenraut on the Black Sun, which is Nazi symbolism. On the background of his campaign material. It was insane, right? So they’ve been actively trying to do subtle nods and gestures in that direction for quite a while, but now there’s like an open embrace of it. And I think part of that is because of Israel. For sure. And the other reason why there’s an open embrace of it is because if your movement revolves around constantly saying the most heinous thing you could possibly say, and that’s your ideological movement, right? That’s at the heart of your ideological moment, whether it be Black people, brown people, why did anybody think that Jews would be spared in that situation? Of course they’re going to inevitably tackle that aspect of it as well, which is why I’ve always been shocked by the likes of Mark Levin. David Horowitz, Ben Shapiro, conservative Jews that have been at the heart of this movement, or even like the entirety of the neocon class that thought that if they just hyper-focused on Islamophobia and justify the war on terror by doing that, that no one would actually ever turn around and be like, hold on.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Hasan Piker: You’re also not like a white Christian.
Alex Wagner: Exactly.
Hasan Piker: Especially because it’s the oldest version of bigotry, it’s the most resilient, most successful version of bigotries that it always blew my mind. The reason why I bring up Mark Levin is because Nick Fuentes did the Tucker Carlson interview.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Hasan Piker: And I think that’s more so just a signal that this is the Republican Party basically heading in that direction. This is their version of populism. And in that interview, Nick Fuentes actually said, I learned about the great replacement from Mark Levin.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Hasan Piker: And it’s like. Mark. Who do you think the Nazis blamed for that? They blamed the Jews, big dog. Why did you think that this wasn’t inevitably going to turn on you?
Alex Wagner: I mean, some people have asked, oh, is this the schism inside the Republican Party? And I would ask you, what’s on the other side of it? Like, what is the counterpoint to the fascist tendencies inside the Republican Party, because I certainly don’t see it.
Hasan Piker: Yeah. Because you can’t you can build a movement where you’re like, we only we hate DEI except for Jews. Like you can do that because that comes across as like insane to the average onlooker, right? You’re like like what am I supposed to what am I supposed to think? I’m a I’m a white boy corn fed Arkansas. Okay, and I’m looking at the television. I’m seeing stuff on my social media feed where it’s like this is crazy. This is heinous. What’s going on in Gaza? And then I’m looking at the TV and I’m like, I’m a Trump voter. And I, you know, I loved everything that he was saying about, like, you know, brown people being scary and killing people, Black people being dangerous, low IQ, all this stuff. But then that same administration is turning around and being like, except if you say anything about Israel, not even about Jewish people in general, but just about Israel. We will deport you. Then you go, okay, that doesn’t make any sense. And if there’s already a nascent, existing, long-standing version of anti-Semitism that says, like, Jews control the organs of power, the media, the banking system, and all this stuff, you’re going to find yourself thinking that that ideology is correct. We’ve pushed people basically to this position with the way that we have refused to acknowledge some of these issues.
Alex Wagner: I mean, a lot of this comes up in the context of young white men being very embracing of fascism. And we talk about the Manosphere as kind of a separate realm, but I wonder if you see a handshake between the kind of masculinity that is championed on the right and whether there’s a cross-pollination with fascist tendencies or how you see that. Like, what is it about nazism or fascism that is so attractive to men who seem lost and in need of like identity. I mean, I guess I’m answering, I actually feel like I know what the answer to this is, but like, can you separate the two? It can there be like, I mean cause you, you talk a lot about masculinity and people look to you towards like an alternative form of masculinity that doesn’t play footsie with fascism. [laughter] And I kind of wonder like, okay so unwind that a little bit for me. And like, how do you, how do you kind of be relevant in the manosphere and reject those tenants?
Hasan Piker: I think it stems from insecurity.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Hasan Piker: It’s a lot of the dispossessed masses that are seeking answers, and a lot of insecure men have been able to basically shift their attention over to some form of systemic analysis that takes away responsibility from them by finding different targets. It’s feminism. It’s women in general that have wronged you. It’s a sense of entitlement, not meeting and the expectations that you have, not meeting with the reality that you’re experiencing. And in that moment of crisis, in that moments of conflict, a lot of young men find themselves seeking out answers. And because the media environment is so heavily polluted with people that say, yes, you are actually worthy. You were supposed to be the great dominator and they took that away from you. Who took that way from you? Trans people, women, feminism, the liberal elites. And yes, brown people as well, and they tried to reconstruct a almost nationalistic mythos in the same exact way that fascist movements did at a time when there was tremendous economic hardship where you had a bunch of veterans, right, that went and fought this war, this great war, that they weren’t getting their pensions, and they were treated as outsiders in their own countries when they’d actually lost so much, they’d seen tremendous hardship and and tremendous violence and they come back and they felt rudderless and these movements were like no we are a great nation uh… It’s a it’s uh… Heightened sense of self that you create in your own mind if you’re like an insecure guy if you feel weak in your real life.
Alex Wagner: If you’re lost.
Hasan Piker: Then you want someone to tell you you’re not actually where you’re strong by definition because you’re, you know, you’re a fascist. Or by definition, you are strong because you are right wing. A lot of these guys are not. It’s actually from a place of tremendous weakness that causes them to feel like, oh, well, if I say the right things, if I find myself in the throes of this, like, manosphere adjacent movement, then I can at least, on the internet, which is where spend most of my time. I can feel like I am a part of this, like broader. Almost militant movement.
Alex Wagner: It’s owning the libs and calling them snowflakes and trolling them on sort of like Hitler memes is one way of feeling like increasing your own sense of self and like you’re like in the—
Hasan Piker: It sounds stupid, but that’s it.
Alex Wagner: You’re the aggressor. And then as it happens, the ideology that undergirds the embrace of Hitler also helps make small people feel bigger and at the expense of the people who are deemed second-class citizens in that ideology.
Hasan Piker: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: I do wonder though, what’s the proper response? Because on some level, it’s like… The initial form of this is them trying to bait the libs, right, into getting like all in a tizzy and getting all twisted about it. And so what is the correct response to it? Like from an online perspective.
Hasan Piker: I think it must be fought diligently and militantly if it’s necessary, especially when there is the threat of violent force. There needs to be a defensive posture against that. I think, like, social stigma plays a role in this, that we are too afraid to say it plays a formative role in it, but social stigma is, I think a good, easy tool to apply in this situation where, like that’s weird, like you’re being a weirdo for being invested in this stuff, like you’re odd.
Alex Wagner: But like J.D. Vance was like, why are you giving these kids are joking around? Like, I don’t want to live in a country where people can’t say Hitler is awesome. I mean, I kind of do when I live in the country [laughter] but he doesn’t. And like they’re sort of making it an issue of free speech, right? Like they can make jokes, they can like, you know, play footsie with these ideas, but like none of this is serious. And then it becomes liberals on the defense about political correctness or free speech or whatever.
Hasan Piker: I don’t think this is necessarily even about political correctness. It’s more so just like, is this what we want to do? Is this a country that we want to live in? Because jokes are fine. And a lot of context and nuance gets lost. I think one of the things that I do in my community is like, I try to create a relatively safer space, but it’s still a learning environment. It is dynamic. There’s people of all different backgrounds coming in and saying whatever they want to say. And therefore, there are going to be instances of like microaggression, things of that nature. But I also want to always maintain that like, you can be a progressive force in this country, but also still be fun to be able to sometimes even ridicule your opponents or make fun of them.
Alex Wagner: Like when you’re like I hate republicans.
Hasan Piker: Yeah, but it’s true, but like, there is some truth to that, but I’m also like, you know, obviously joking. And the thing is, when you do that, the same reactionary forces that sit around and say, we love free speech, will then very quickly turn around and demand your deplatforming. I, on the left, get, there’s so much advocacy around trying to deplatform me all the time. And it’s oftentimes by the right. It’s most commonly by the, right. Like the whole. Even the America Deserve 9/11 moment, right, from 2019, where I’m talking about the concept of blowback, but of course I’m not using the best language, to describe the situation was an initiative that made its way to Fox News. Fox News was doing a 48-hour news coverage on it. They’re still doing it six years later because the Cuomo campaign decided this was a viable line of attack.
[news clip]: America deserved 9/11. That’s Zohran’s buddy Hasan Piker saying we deserve 9/11. It’s a disgrace to every life loss.
Hasan Piker: It was not, it was a major failure, which I could have told them. They should have given me the $3.5 million instead.
Alex Wagner: Woulda, shoulda, coulda, Andrew Cuomor.
Hasan Piker: Yeah, shout out to Michael Bloomberg for that one and also the other major donors. But like that, what is that, if not the exact same thing that conservatives rail against? There is this, there is this—
Alex Wagner: The snowflake thing really is applicable way more to the right at this point than to the left.
Hasan Piker: But that’s always been the case. Canceled culture was so successfully presented as this like leftist, liberal thing, when in fact both sides always do it, and they always weaponize it against their ideological opponents. But I think there was only one side that was actually taking ownership over it, and that was the liberals.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Hasan Piker: And therefore, a lot of people in the margins, a lot people that are self-described, apolitical, don’t care about politics, saw that and were like. Yeah, you’re right. The SJW compilations do show this imbalance where it is the left that’s trying to cancel. It is the left that is like the HR. And that did create a lot of animosity towards whatever is the left.
[AD BREAK]
Alex Wagner: I got to ask you because we were talking about Nazis in the left and the right versus the left. But like, do you have thoughts on Graham Platner and his tattoo?
Hasan Piker: [laughs] Oh my god, um, I I don’t even know where to begin with that one. So Graham Platner is a very unique case, at least from my perspective, because he is a through and through Bernie-crat, right? He is a Bernie hand-selected pick who’s running for office, and right out of the gates, he was like, I’m anti-Israel. I don’t think we should be giving weapons to Israel, and I don’t think we should be doing anything with Israel if they’re going to continue doing a genocide, right? And that was a unique position. And then on top of that, he was pro-Medicare for all in numerous other Bernie-style positions and what was interesting to me about that whole saga is that in spite of him being like very obviously a grunt force, you know, machine gunner for the Marines, which are sometimes known as crayon eaters for good reason, he, you went on shore leave in Croatia and split and got the most obvious Nazi tattoo, the third most common Nazi symbol of Totenkopf on his chest. In spite of that, Maine seemingly didn’t care about that situation at all. And I think that’s a really interesting moment in American politics for where the liberal base is moving.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Hasan Piker: Because for far too long… The organs that work alongside the Democratic Party that are like liberal adjacent or left adjacent, whatever you wanna call it, have often weaponized the version of identity against the left flank, right? While simultaneously telling their audiences that electability actually revolves around moderates. Moderate positions are how you win. And this is actually a real battle that is still currently taking place within the Democratic Party. The Welcome Pack piece that came out, the Welcome Pack report that came out was, again, another version of this exact same thing. And I don’t think liberals are responding to that electability argument, or rather, I think they think now, after failure after failure from the moderates, especially the second failure against Donald Trump, again an incompetent, monstrous fascist. They realized like, no, maybe the left-flank, left-populous position is the actual electability argument, and maybe we were deluded.
Alex Wagner: We’ll maybe, like, okay, so but—
Hasan Piker: So they’re giving a lot of grace to Graham Platner is what I’m saying.
Alex Wagner: And I think Graham Platner has handled it basically as well as you can, which is another model of how the left can understand people’s flaws and how you can own the mistakes you made in life and how they made you who you are today and arguably a better person. But like, just like, as you say, the one of the top three Nazi tattoos, like, does that, is that, fuck, is not fucked up like what?
Hasan Piker: No I think it is.
Alex Wagner: I mean, are liberals just becoming more okay with that? And like, is that a problem? I don’t know. I don’t know.
Hasan Piker: So there’s two things that I think about in that regard. I think that, we’ll see, because we saw with Zohran Mamdani, right?
Alex Wagner: Yeah, and I wanna talk to you about that.
Hasan Piker: A lot of liberals were very forgiving of the faucet of misinformation and angry lines of attack that were completely, in my opinion, unjustifiable and outright racist at times. The notion that he is a scary anti-Semite is, honestly, an incredibly permissible form of bigotry, like institutionally permissible form of bigotry. The assumption that like he’s gonna be anti-Semitic, he’s anti-Israel, he is Muslim, come on. Like, and these are very real fears, like we don’t treat white supremacy in that same vein. Like if someone were to say, as a white Christian, as many have, right, I think like desegregation is a real problem. I think that I don’t want my children to live in a racial jungle. We would be like, okay, that’s your problem. Like, you need to deal with that on your own, but in this circumstance, because Jews are also a marginalized identity in the United States of America, and there is a lot of historic violence towards Jewish people on the virtue of being Jewish, that there is this conversation that takes place where. Uh… We we place a lot of emphasis on on whether or not uh… There’s this like broad majority of Jewish people that are truly terrified of zorah mumdani because he’s uh… Seemingly or considered to be anti-semitic and I think that’s genuinely a racist position to apply to someone like Zohran Mamdani I think it’s ridiculous he’s done nothing and said nothing but that is even remotely anti-semetic uh… And yet—
Alex Wagner: He staked out a position on gaza that is, it comports, that is not in favor of what is real is doing but that does not mean he is an anti-semite.
Hasan Piker: And here, I’ll give you an example. Sometimes I like to think about it as like, if Zohran was like a white Christian guy or a Jewish guy and he was saying that, would these arguments stick?
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Hasan Piker: Would there be this much? I mean, look at Graham Planner, he’s a fucking Totenkopf tattoo.
Alex Wagner: [laughing] This is what I’m saying.
Hasan Piker: And even then people are like, not even making that argument, right?
Alex Wagner: Give him a pass!
Hasan Piker: My point is like that is institutionalized Islamophobia. That is a big part of it. I don’t like to talk about it too much because it’s like a lot of people tap out when they hear that and they’re like, I don t want to hear this. Whatever. Here we go again. But the reason why I’m saying it here is that like we shall see if the liberals are more forgiving of guys like Graham Platner because he’s a white dude and they think that is like the primary version of likeability. For liberals in general.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Hasan Piker: Or is it because he came out of the gay swinging with very leftist, like left flank policies, and that’s the reason why they’re forgiving of him. And I think the contest I’m paying close attention to is Abdul El-Sayed, a person who has none of the red flags whatsoever, another person that basically has an infallible reputation and has actually more experience in politics as well. He’s run for the governors, he failed to defeat, I think it was Whitmer that he failed to defeat on a Medicare for all campaign. And he is the real deal, right? And he’s also another early Bernie pick. He’s also anti-Zionist. We shall see if liberals are just as forgiving of a brown guy that is running on a very similar campaign to Graham Platner.
Alex Wagner: Without the tattoo.
Hasan Piker: Yeah, without the Nazi tattoo, but he’s a brown guy. Does that mean that it’s like scarier? My point is—
Alex Wagner: I think we know the answer, don’t we?
Hasan Piker: Well, I- I-
Alex Wagner: I think we know the answer. [laughter]
Hasan Piker: No, I don’t—
Alex Wagner: As a brown person, I think I know the answer.
Hasan Piker: No, I think that’s defeatist and that’s I I don’t abide by that. I try I recognize that there’s a hurdle, right? There’s a hurdle. There’s higher threshold, but you can climb it and you can make up for that higher threshold by instilling messaging discipline and and being and then not stepping on any landmines to the best of your ability and also just focusing on issues that uh that the largest base actually care about that’s why I always say send it to working class because the working class even if they don’t self-identify as the working class, are the largest group in this country. They’re the 99%.
Alex Wagner: Well, and that’s what Mamdani did, right?
Hasan Piker: Yes.
Alex Wagner: And I know you’ve been critical of traditional media that’s focused on his kind of charisma and his communication strategy and, well, his campaign infrastructure, I think, is absolutely a legit thing to focus on. I guess the ca—and that, you know, people haven’t focused enough on the issues that he—first of all, the big ideas he had, the innovative ideas, the issues, the policy itself, and then that was the thing that actually won him the mayorship. But I do wonder… You know, as we sit here and try and figure out like, the secret sauce for reclaiming the country. Wasn’t it necessary to have someone who was young and charismatic and great on messaging to deliver that baseline message? Like, doesn’t that stuff matter> I mean, I don’t need to sound shallow, but like.
Hasan Piker: No, no, esthetics matter. They do.
Alex Wagner: Like, big time, don’t you think?
Hasan Piker: But again, we go back to the esthetics that are positive, right? The optics that were positive. He’s young, he’s vibrant, he is dynamic. And he’s a great orator, right. But also, he was visibly Muslim. He was brown, he Muslim, he socialist. These are things that are supposed to be major hangups, right, these are things that the DCCC is never going to look at. They’re going to be like, get out of here, you’re done, right and yet he had to… He had to actually overcome this incredibly crowded primary field with other candidates that were pretty good too. But again, he had to climb these additional hurdles and he did it successfully. So it’s not impossible.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Hasan Piker: It is a real—
It just takes once in a generation talent to do it. [laughs]
Hasan Piker: No, but sometimes you’ve got to be that person is what I mean. I think like, I had this issue with Kamala Harris quite a bit. I talked to some of my wonderful friends who would always talk about like, well, it’s misogyny, it misogynoir, it white supremacy, like they just did not want a Black woman in a position of power. And there’s truth to that, of course.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Hasan Piker: Anti-Blackness is fundamental in this country’s politics.
Alex Wagner: So is misogyny.
Hasan Piker: Yeah, and so was misogyny, of course. And that didn’t mean that it was impossible because the alternative to that is then we only have to run white guys—
Alex Wagner: Well I think some people think that’s the answer—
Hasan Piker: No, but I think that’s ridiculous. We have to drop that idea in its entirety. We have to be much more forgiving and we have to more open-minded because America is an incredibly diverse country. And there was also a Black man whose middle name was Hussein that was able to also win with a broad populist message as well. And also stake his campaign around being against the Iraq war in 2007 and 2008.
Alex Wagner: We’ll be back with even more of my conversation with Hasan Piker after this quick break.
[AD BREAK]
Alex Wagner: I do wonder, though, the country feels like it’s, you know, I was in a conversation with Barack Obama last night. You know, the countries changed so much. Everything from the bifurcation of information systems to tech to what Trump’s done to the national conversation, the sense of unity, that I wonder how an Obama candidacy would even work in this day and age, you know? But I think Mamdani, I do want to get back to Mamdani first—
Hasan Piker: You think it would be like a Mamdani thing?
Alex Wagner: Yeah, I mean I think, which is way more, I think the Mamdani campaign is way more out front on complicated, Obama didn’t wanna have to talk about race until he was forced to by the right wing, right?
Hasan Piker: Of course. No, no, that, I mean, neither did Mamdani. Mamdani did not, like it was obvious that he’s Muslim and he would like target that base, but there was never a moment where, there was really a moment until the very last like faucet of Islamophobia where he put his foot down and said like, guys, what are we doing here? Like, this is ridiculous. You’re not only harming me. You’re not only attacking me, you’re attacking one in eight New Yorkers that are also Muslim by constantly associating us with like terrorism, with 9/11, with Islamophobia of this sort. This is ridiculous. And I think that he waited until the very last moment, just like Barack Obama did, because if you come out of the gate swinging with that, that’s gonna be the entire campaign.
Alex Wagner: Yeah, he came out swinging with democratic socialism and that was like enough of a left hook. But I mean, I guess I wonder in the context of this conversation we’re having about the left and masculinity and, you know, how out front you can be on issues that are complicated. You know, we know from exit polling that Mamdani did incredibly well with young men. And I wonder as we try and understand…
Hasan Piker: Plus 40, right?
Alex Wagner: Yeah, plus 40. And also even Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill did better with men. But let’s focus on Mamdani for a second because he is the man in the race. And I wonder what kind, like describe to me what kind of masculinity you think he represents.
Hasan Piker: I mean, I think he’s just a guy. He’s just the guy that you can hang with. And there are many people like him out there of all different backgrounds, shapes, colors, sizes. And that’s what it is. Like he was-
Alex Wagner: Like, he’s authentically himself, is that the key?
Hasan Piker: And that’s that’s what I do as well. Like I’m just authentically myself. I don’t care like, you know, I’ll go to a gay bar I’ll do like a like a drag thing every now and then and that breaks the brains of so many insecure people where they’re like oh, you wore a dress you wore dresses like, okay Like who gives a shit right if you’re confident in your sexuality if you come to your masculinity this kind of stuff doesn’t matter.
Alex Wagner: I think that’s a thing people don’t get. I was doing this show back in the day and this guy was like, like you, tall, strapping dude who would wear pearl necklaces and another dude just like them, they would do their nails and they were like, and? And it’s like, it’s something that I think politicians don’t get about masculinity because they still think of it in these pretty retrograde tropes of like, you would never doubt, like, you would ever get into makeup or you’d never, there’s no femininity. There’s no room for femininity and it was like. The thing about the 21st century is like the young dudes are like way more comfortable.
Hasan Piker: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: Being whatever the fuck they want to be without feeling like they need and not feeling like they need to be in a box and someone out there politically needs to recognize that. When we talk about Mamdani and the the road ahead for him and I ask you this because I know you were at Mamdani headquarters you, advisor? Advisor? Engaged supporter engaged supporter—
Hasan Piker: I was an engaged supporter. Exactly. I was an early booster. [both speaking] I try to help to the best of my ability and I think the most impactful part of that was, like I said, in the primary, getting his name in front of a lot of—
Alex Wagner: People.
Hasan Piker: Organizers and a lot people who were excited and primed and ready to go. With a candidate that represented their worldview, that was closer to their worldview. This would not work with every single campaign though. That’s what I always stress to other people. It’s not like I can just like activate my audience.
Alex Wagner: You’re like, don’t come to me.
Hasan Piker: Yeah, in the direction of like Abigail Spanberger, for example.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Hasan Piker: Unless there is something there that is tangible, something there like people can associate with.
Alex Wagner: What do you mean by that? Like, why wouldn’t that work with Abigail Spanberger, who, by the way, like, won by a larger margin than Zohran Mamdani and then swept the Virginia House of Delegates?
Hasan Piker: Of course—
Alex Wagner: What, is it because of the moderate piece of it? Like.
Hasan Piker: CIA, moderate, [laughter] but I mean it’s a gubernatorial race so it’s a little different for sure because like I try to explain that to people where it’s like when you’re the governor you just kind of have to do right by your constituents like there is no ideological, I got… They’re usually, that calculation is more significant than like party loyalty. And that’s why you have, you know, very famously, Andy Beshar, for example. And also red governors and blue states. Right. So from that reason, it’s like a different, uh, analysis that people are making, and it was very obviously like the anti-Trump vote, right? They did not want someone who was going to be Trump aligned.
Alex Wagner: And that’s what I want to ask in the context of Mamdani, because the right wing is losing its fucking mind.
Hasan Piker: Yeah, it’s awesome.
Alex Wagner: To move on, right? Yeah. And like Trump has already very clearly set his sights on Mamdani, and I wonder how much we should expect him.
Hasan Piker: I think Trump will surprise you on Mamdani.
Alex Wagner: What do you mean?
Hasan Piker: I think Donald Trump reads the room a lot better than people give him credit for. Some people do give him credit for it. He sees charisma and he likes it. He’s a television man. And I was reading, I think it was Peter Baker in the New York Times that wrote this report. And a part of that was talking about how Donald Trump behind closed doors has been speaking a very different tune about Zohran Mamdani than he is when he’s speaking out against them.
Alex Wagner: I’m with you on the Trump could surprise us on Mamdani. I think he does. He respects charisma. He respects political talent. It’s why he’s obsessed with Barack Obama and obsessed with the comparisons. But he also has trampled on Obama’s legacy like explicitly. He had his goons at like, you know, DNI investigate Obama and like his, you know, Obama is his Moby Dick in a lot of ways. I could see the same being true for Mamdani, where he privately sort of respects him as a politician and as a man, but also will use him as a foil.
Hasan Piker: Oh yeah.
Alex Wagner: To try and take on the libs and New York City and, you know, try and make life hell for the people that Mamdany has to govern. So I guess I wonder, you now, as you think about it, like how much should the left expect Mamdani to be an avid, a bulwark against Trump? And how much, should the Left give him space to actually just run the most complicated bureaucratic city in America.
Hasan Piker: I think that’s going to happen regardless. There’s going be a lot of growing pains, and there is going to be a tremendous amount of animosity towards whatever he tries to do. It’s going happen because there are far too many advocacy groups and far too many corporate interests at play here that have been very frustrated and very fearful about even offering a crumb of hope to the working class. And Mamdani does represent that hope. His campaign was able to overcome great odds. I know we say, oh, it’s New York, everyone’s woke, but like, that was an insane race that took place.
Alex Wagner: Yeah, it was it was—
Hasan Piker: It was nationally significant, but it was also internationally significant. I have friends in LFI, in France Unbowed, that are going crazy. Mélenchon has been talking about Zohran Mamdani over and over again. I got people in the Green Party, hitting me up in the UK to be like, hey, can we get an interview with Zohran Mamdani?
Alex Wagner: Well, and it’s such a counterpoint. I mean, we have exported a certain brand of, like, toxic American imperialism and, like MAGA bullshit for, you know, the last eight years.
Hasan Piker: You got people in Korea wearing MAGA hats, like we are polluting, we’re exporting our brain rot to these other countries. And you saw that with Sanseitō in Japan. This America first mechanism with a white guy, by the way, who was a MAGA Trump booster that went to Japan and was a campaign advisor for this, with this party called Sanseitō. That actually made waves, like they actually modestly increased their visibility in Japanese politics out of nowhere, and they were running on xenophobia and all this other stuff, which of course.
Alex Wagner: You’re welcome, Japan.
Hasan Piker: Of course, Japan is already very xenophobic, but it was interesting to see such an Americanized version of that.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Hasan Piker: Especially when their xenophobia is also not exactly kind of white people either. Like, they don’t want white people in the country either. [laughter]
Alex Wagner: But I mean, to that end, like the reason Mamdani’s victory I think is so relevant is because it’s such a counterpoint to what people have come to expect from America. It reminds the rest of the world that we’re not just this sort of singular neo-fascist entity, but that there are incredible new leaders on the horizon that offer a way more inclusive, dynamic version of this country that we thought was like basically lost.
Hasan Piker: America is the nation of contradictions, right, and it is exhibited in the mind of the median voter.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Hasan Piker: You see it all the time. People believe inherently contradictory statements. Ask a Trump supporter if they want to build a wall and purge the nation immigrants, they say yes. Ask them if you think people that have been here for five years should get amnesty and become citizens, they say, of course. Those are directly at odds with one another. So I think we have to I was about to say engage in more dialectical thinking, but really we have to actually offer an alternative. And if the left flank party does not offer this alternative, then we find ourselves swept away by the right wing forces and start only agreeing with the right-wing position because that’s the only position that we hear. And that’s why it was so damaging for the Democrats, I think, in the lead up to the election to, or even in the beginning of the Biden administration. To not immediately look at the table and say, we actually won on a pro-immigration stance, and we should commit to this first 100 days agenda. And they should have been campaigning year-round, as the Republicans do, and they should’ve been creating a strong and resilient base of support on key issues that their advocacy should be centered on, instead of constantly playing defense after years and years of right-wing propaganda that they never addressed.
Alex Wagner: Yeah.
Hasan Piker: The reason why I bring this up is because it was a non-starter, like being pro-migrant was a nonstarter in this election. And that’s the reason why the Democrats thought in their endless brilliance that on October 5 they could unveil this right-wing Oklahoma Senator written bill that was going to be very serious about tackling the immigration crisis, where they adopted the right- wing framing that was utterly devoid of facts. That was complete manufactured hysteria, right? And they said, yes, you’re right, immigrants are constituting a national security threat, but we are the serious party that’s going to actually take care of this problem. When you do that, you don’t actually win any votes.
Alex Wagner: Yeah, well you sede ground to the territory of the area.
Hasan Piker: All you’ve done is allow the country to be more right-wing until they actually see the implementation of those policies. Another thing that I constantly screamed about over and over again, I was like, this is very dangerous. Mass deportations are Nazi shit. You guys are not taking this seriously. You are not pushing back against the dangers that immigrants present. They were too fearful.
Alex Wagner: Well, yeah.
Hasan Piker: To take a stand on this issue because Democrats don’t believe in anything.
Alex Wagner: Well—
Hasan Piker: Or at least that’s the way that they look.
Alex Wagner: The upshot of the Trump years, it has forced a crystallization of beliefs and ethics, and you see these immigration dragnets, and I think it has, I mean, it’s forced Democrats to first of all acknowledge the contributions of immigrants, how they are the lifeblood of the American economy.
Hasan Piker: I don’t think they’re doing enough—
Alex Wagner: I agree with you. I completely agree with—
Hasan Piker: I don’t think the Democratic Party is. I think the base is—
Alex Wagner: It’s people seeing what’s happening in their communities.
Hasan Piker: But as long as the Democrats refuse to listen to their base, they are never going to win elections. They will only eke out marginal victories here and there as we ratchet further and further into very, very dangerous right-wing territory, which we’re in right now. We are in fascism territory. If you go along with the James Carville method of just showing your belly and expecting results. That’s how you arrive at being the less popular party at a time when there’s unprecedented animosity towards the Republicans. It’s unacceptable.
Alex Wagner: Don’t show your soft belly, go out there and fight.
Hasan Piker: Yeah, people want fighters, and I think that’s going to—
Alex Wagner: Fighters who can wear pearl necklaces too. Yeah, sure.
Hasan Piker: But I think that is like the major thing that Democrats need to address that there were they will put their. They’ll put their bodies on the line They will be leading the charge that they will they’re unafraid to go out in public and actually Lead protests and actually make a big fuss about these issues. That’s why I gave a lot of respect to Chris Van Hollen when he made the issue of Kilmar Abrego Garcia consequential for the Republicans, that was a turning point that paired up with like, you know, people blackbagging random neighbors off of the streets was creating a lot of animosity and a lot discontent amongst the base, but they were not, the media wasn’t covering it as much. And until Chris Van Hollen was like, no, I want proof of life. This is one of my constituents. I want a proof of the life for Kilmar Garcia, I’m down to go to El Salvador. Then it became a major issue.
Alex Wagner: Totally.
Hasan Piker: That was the turning point in the polls as well for Americans that were too busy to care about what the administration was up to because they were too busy trying to make rent.
Alex Wagner: Listen, you can care about affordability and the welfare of your fellow human beings. And I think that that’s what the moment calls for. Hasan, it’s like, we could talk for six more hours.
Hasan Piker: Yeah.
Alex Wagner: There’s a lot to cover. I hope I can talk to you again.
Hasan Piker: For sure.
Alex Wagner: It’s great to get your perspective on all of this.
Hasan Piker: Oh, thank you for having me.
Alex Wagner: Keep doing what you’re doing.
Hasan Piker: All right.
Alex Wagner: Maybe not the maybe not the chew. Iworry about your health.
Hasan Piker: Oh, the Zyns?
Alex Wagner: The Zyns, sorry.
Hasan Piker: I got the Trump assassination attempt Zyn tin.
Alex Wagner: Of course you do.
Hasan Piker: This is a real, this is a really party trick when I go to like all the manosphere podcasts, they love it. When I pull this out, they’re like, oh my god!
Alex Wagner: Before we go, I wanna hear from you. Have you been impacted directly by the Trump administration and its policies? Maybe you’ve experienced changes to your job or to your healthcare or at your kid’s school. If you have, I want to hear it all, whether these policies have impacted you for better or for worse. So send us an email or a one minute voice note at runawaycountry@crooked.com and we may be in touch to feature your story. And thank you to everyone who has written in already. Last but not least, don’t forget to check out the show and our rapid response videos on our YouTube channel, Runaway Country, with Alex Wagner. Runaway Country is a Crooked Media production. Our senior producer is Alyona Minkovski. Our producer is Emma Illick-Frank. Production support from Megan Larson and Lacy Roberts. The show is mixed and edited by Charlotte Landes. Ben Hethcoat is our video producer and Matt DeGroot is our head of production. Audio support comes from Kyle Seglin. Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Adriene Hill is our Head of News and Politics. Katie Long is our Executive Producer of Development. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writer’s Guild of America East.
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