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Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., stood by far-left streamer Hasan Piker on Tuesday when pressed about a Democratic Party that included both someone like Piker and Democratic strategist James Carville, as moderate Democrats told Fox News Digital the party must abandon extremism.
“So when someone like James Carville says he doesn’t want to be in the same political party as Hasan Piker, which one are you going to take?” CNN’s Abby Phillip asked Sanders Tuesday night.
“Well, that’s not much of a choice,” Sanders said. “If Mr. Carville doesn’t want to be in my party, the party that I belong to, that Piker, that El-Sayed belongs to, he can start his own party.”
Sanders discussed the Michigan Senate race, where he endorsed Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who campaigned alongside Piker. El-Sayed narrowly defeated moderate Rep. Haley Stevens in the high-stakes Democratic Senate primary after the state finished counting votes on Wednesday, providing a boost for the party’s left wing in its ideological battle with the center-left establishment.
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El-Sayed has campaigned with Piker and appeared on the far-left streamer’s YouTube channel.
The progressive senator argued that he could turn the tables and ask if people wanted to be part of a party that accepts AIPAC money or supports an “extremist” government in Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Do you want to be in a party which has not stood up to the AI industry because they got a lot of money from AI or from crypto?” he said. “So you can pick, you know, you can pick whatever you want to pick. But I think we need a big tent, and I think people like Piker should be welcomed into that, certainly.”
Carville did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Center-left think tank Third Way told Fox News Digital, “Democrats lost power in part because we lost the battle of reasonableness against Donald Trump. Voters in battleground states said in Third Way’s post-election poll from the 2024 race that they saw the Democratic Party as more extreme than Republicans, 44% to 41%.”
“Embracing extremism will only serve to hand Republicans a key pickup opportunity and imperil Democrats elsewhere,” the group warned.
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Sanders was also asked if he was comfortable with Piker saying that “America deserved 9/11” during a stream in 2019.
“I think that’s a dumb statement,” Sanders said. “On the other hand, he has a whole lot of followers and a lot of things that he’s saying that are making sense to a lot of people. I think, you know, we have to get above cancel culture. You know, when you’re doing radio, whatever they do, podcasts three hours a day, you say dumb things.”
“I suspect if you go back over your career, there may be one or two things that you’ve said that you may have regretted,” the senator told Phillip. “But I think what we have got to do is look at the totality of where people are coming from and go forward.”
After receiving widespread backlash at the time, Piker later said in an interview that he “obviously” did not mean America deserved the attacks and defended the viral quote as a critique of U.S. foreign policy.
Third Way told Fox News Digital, “Republicans are salivating at the opportunity to pummel swing voters with ads of El-Sayed embracing extremist stances. Videos of El-Sayed with his arms around Hasan Piker alongside anti-American and misogynistic quotes, like claiming America “deserved” 9/11, tweets about defunding the police, and photos of El-Sayed calling to abolish ICE will fill the timelines of voters in the middle.”
“Democratic candidates like El-Sayed need to win over 60% of moderate voters to take back power and put a check on Donald Trump,” the group added. “That’s not spin — that’s math. So El-Sayed has work to do as he turns to the general election and it starts with dropping the extremism.”
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Carville told Fox News on Sunday’s “The Briefing” that he would not be in the same party as Piker.
“I am not going to be in the same party with Hasan Piker,” he said. “If he becomes a force in a Democratic Party, I’m out of here. I have no intention of ever being in the same political party with that guy.”
Carville predicted that one of them was going to leave the party.
“I can’t sit here and tell you for certain how this is going to turn out, but the one thing I can tell you for certain, Hasan Piker and James Carville are not going to be in the same political party,” he said. “One of us is going to leave. It might even be me.”
Ahead of the Democratic primary on Tuesday, Piker spoke with El-Sayed in a video for his YouTube channel. The two began by discussing the “full-on freakout” caused by Piker choosing to campaign for El-Sayed and reacted to Carville’s remarks about leaving the party.
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“Now James Carville is talking about leaving the party,” Piker said. “We got [Pennsylvania Sen.] John Fetterman, James Carville fantasizing about leaving the party. I’m like, you’re sweetening the deal. That was really interesting.”
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