from WNYC Studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Thursday, April 23rd.

In this midterm election season and looking forward to 2028, one of the debates within the Democratic Party is whether

or not Democratic politicians should be willing to appear on Hassan Piker's Twitch stream or include

him as a surrogate at campaign rallies. For those not familiar, Hassan Piker is a 34-year-old leftist

Twitch streamer touted as a potential Joe Rogan of the left,

that is the host of a show that reaches millions of young voters, especially young men,

who get their politics from podcasts and things like Twitch streams rather than conventional news media.

Like Rogan, Piker's audience of an estimated three million

swings young and swings male, seemingly ripe fruit for Democrats looking to win back a swath

of party defectors. The problem for the party is that Piker is very outspoken in ways that

sometimes get him labeled misogynist, racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-American.

In a minute, we'll play a few examples and debate two questions.

Is Fassan Piker, a hater, or a truth-teller, and just strategically, is it smart for

Democrats to go on his show or smarter to stay away?

But here's a little more background.

Early this month, Michigan Senate candidate, Abdul-El-Said, running in the Democratic primary, campaigned with Piker at the University of Michigan and Michigan State.

El-Sahed's campaign said the rallies drew more sign-ups than any other event of his campaign.

They also drew condemnation.

One of his primary opponents, State Senator Mallory McMorrow, compared Piker to far-right, white nationalist streamer, Nick Fuentes.

So appearing with Piker has become a 2026 litmus test of sorts for

Democrats one way or another. Politico had an article about this recently that named three

Democratic presidential hopefuls for 2028 who say they would appear with Piker. They were California

...