A top aide to Vice President Harris’ failed presidential campaign recently called for more cultural voices, such as Hasan Pickler, an outspoken anti-US and anti-Israel Twitch star who previously faced criticism for saying “America 9/ Deserved 11.”
Harris’ former deputy campaign manager, Rob Flaherty, said during a recent interview that Democrats are “losing a grip on the culture” and that he planned to develop a “whole thriving system” ahead of future elections.
“We need an entire thriving ecosystem,” Flaherty told Semaphore. “It’s not just Pod Save America, although I think we should have more of those. It’s not just Hasan Pikar. We should have more Hassan Pickers. It is also the cultural creators, the people who are on a pedestal who influence non-partisan audiences. All those things need to happen together.”
“The reality is that these are not going to be big media organizations. It’s going to be a network and a collection of individual personalities, because that’s how people get their information now,” he said.
Flaherty, who previously served as director of digital strategy for the Biden White House, may face backlash for calling for “more Hassan Pickers” due to Picker’s past controversial comments. Picker, who previously raised more than $1 million for Palestinian aid, has in recent years used his platform with millions of followers to downplay and justify terrorist attacks such as October 7 and 9/11 as acts of resistance. Have used.
During a 2019 livestream, Pickler praised the “brave soldier” who wounded conservative U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, while he was deployed to Afghanistan as a Navy SEAL, asking, “Would that war And, like, he literally lost his eye because some Mujahideen, a brave soldier, shot a hole in his eye with his wound?”
He further stated that “America deserved 9/11, I’m saying that,” before later backtracking and saying it was “unfair.” However, in another stream this year, Pickler again mocked 9/11, saying “Oh my god, 9/11 is gonna be 2 so bad” and “Give Saudi Arabia a nuke so they can’t stop 9/11.” 11 can do 2.” ,
In another stream, Picker broadcast propaganda from the Houthis, an Iranian-backed group in Yemen that is designated as a terrorist group by the US. Rather than explicitly addressing the materials as questionable propaganda, the streamer expressed sympathy and admiration for the group.
“They make music about their f—ing actions all the time,” Pickler said of terrorist propaganda. “They like to see the American flag and the Israeli flag go together.”
“They don’t care about heavy missiles…no matter what, they will literally win the war. …For them, it’s an act of resistance. You know what I mean?” he added.
“It doesn’t matter that the rape happened on October 7,” Pickler said in a May 22 stream. “It doesn’t change the dynamics (of Palestinians and Israelis) for me.”
During an April 18 stream, Pikar also expressed that Hamas was “less evil” after the Israeli military.
While Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and others have been on Picker’s platform, Rep. Richie Torres, Dem. of New York, wrote a letter this year to top executives of Twitch and Facebook. Amazon “expressed concern about the rise of anti-Semitism on Twitch at the hands of Hassan Picker” and said that Picker “has emerged as the poster child for the post-October seventh outbreak of anti-Semitism in the US.”
“Outside the context of October 7, Mr. Pickler has also joked and mused about men date-raping women on a college campus and posted a photo of a handgun above a United States senator That seems to be an open invitation for gun violence against a sitting elected official,” Torres said. “Inviting your followers to shoot an elected official, whether done sincerely or in jest, is a threat that needs to be taken seriously by federal law enforcement.”
Picker’s Twitch streams regularly receive over a million views and often have over 30,000 viewers at a given time.
Fox News Digital contacted Flaherty for comment but did not receive a response.
Fox News’ Andrea Margolis contributed reporting.
(TagstoTranslate)Politics(T)US News(T)2024 Presidential Election(T)Democrats(T)Kamala Harris
