Hasan Piker Is Driving Liberal Media INSANE

It's been a roller coaster year for CBS News, having been subject to a takeover by David Ellison's Paramount in October last year. One of the first things they did was to install Barry Vice as the editor-inchief. Despite having zero experience in broadcast journalism, she made negative headlines instantly by firing huge numbers of staff, including high-profile correspondent Scott P, as well as rewriting scripts for anchors and cancelling stories that were critical of the Trump regime. With the midterm elections just months away, the American legacy media, including CBS, are going into overdrive to smear candidates that are critical of the US relationship with Israel. And none are more prominent right now than Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El Say. El Say won the Democratic nomination on a promise to support an immediate US arms embargo on Israel to spend more money at home and openly criticized Israel's genocide in Gaza and land theft in the West Bank. Most polls currently show El Say ahead and so the mainstream media have put their collective thumbs on the scale to make his election against the Apac endorsed Republican nominee Mike Rogers more competitive. Out of all of the bad faith attacks against him, it was CBS that won first prize for the worst post yet. As the nation prepares to mark 25 years since September the 11th, 2001, Abdul El Say, the Democratic nominee for US Senate in Michigan, may be facing the risk of renewed scrutiny and fresh political attack. Yes, that's right. It's opposed to explicitly linking El Say to 9/11, which must surely have pretty huge justification given how much it looks like it's simply trying to link his Islamic faith to the Slafy jihadists of Alqaaida. Well, surprise surprise, it's just Islamophobia. The only thing that CBS could find was this tweet. Today, I mourn the 3K lives, six hit injuries, and infrastructural devastation in New York City perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my faith. Tomorrow I'll mourn 1 million lives, millions of injuries and infrastructural devastation in three countries perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my country. Literally zero things incorrect by that statement. Nothing wrong with that statement whatsoever. I mean, he even condemned the fact that people weaponized Islam to commit such acts of terror, thereby trying to deliberately delineate himself away from the ideologies that led to 9/11. So the idea that that is anything other than what it was explicitly him saying that he mourned the victims of terrorism and indeed the victims of the response to 9/11 the form of the war on terror should be and is totally uncontroversial. It's so uncontroversial in fact that even former Republican strategists turned anti-Trump activists Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller could see the racism that was dripping from that post. this headline. Nobody is actually inviting scrutiny of past remarks because of 911. Nobody is doing that. Uh like >> you are they are >> well wanted mainstream news to have voice. [laughter] >> Uh this is like a a fullon invention of two separate things and trying to tie them together. CBS is tying them together and then they're letting you the racism fill in the rest. Uh, and it is atrocious. That is like a real and look sometimes I don't get as torquked as everybody else over Barry Weiss. I'm very torqued about this and and she has been doing all kinds of bad things. I just mean uh I am much more concerned about the overall like the Ellison of it all, the consolidation of media and everything. But this like putting an editorial thumb on the scale to tie him to 911 is disgusting. I bet he was in high school when 911 happened. >> Yeah. It's like 911 reminded me of Abdul Elsad and so he wrote an article about how he's terrible. That was literally the tweet. And it's just like straight racism. And I mean there's just so many things that that you could write about Abdul. I like JBL said he's not my his cup of tea. I'm sure anyone listening to the show can tell. Like I'm getting increasingly radicalized in his favor just because I'm so annoyed about all the I I'm so all of the attacks on him are so bad faith. JD yesterday in his speech was talking about how Abdul is evil and how he only cares about people of his own faith and like he doesn't care about anyone else. And I'm just like [ __ ] you. How on earth could such a post have been signed off? Maybe it was an internal sleep at the wheel. Well, [sighs] about that. It turns out the vice herself led the story, including personally directing the Islamophobic language and praising the story during an editorial meeting. It turns out that there is no level of depravity the pro-Zionist media won't stoop to to smear people who oppose Israel's genocide in Gaza. And in this instant, Vice's intervention dove into the explicit Husbra operations laid out in this clip by Israel's diaspora affairs minister. for very Islamic Now, for those listening on the podcast, that was him specifically saying that what Israel should do rather than try and promote the opposition to anti-semitism because average Americans and Europeans don't care about it, which I don't think is true. I think they do care about it. They just don't care about the conflation of anti-inism with anti-semitism. But saying what they do care about is radical Islam. So instead of trying to promote causes against anti-semitism, they should ally with conservative groups in America and the United States to try and promote an anti-radical Islam narrative to try and justify support for Israel, which seems again very similar to what CBS was doing in that article with that that tweet that they put out promoting the article as well. Essentially saying, "Oh, you got to be scared of the Muslims because they're linked to the kind of people who did 9/11." and only by the fact that they share a common faith, not that they share a common ideology or anything like that. It is specifically part of the Hasbro strategy to turn people and turn European and American society inward against itself, create societal discord purely for the interests of their state abroad. That's what's happening there. And it seems like the mainstream media in the United States and also as we see in Europe as well, very happy to play ball with the Hasbro strategy there. Now, this isn't the only angle of attack the press have been using against Elsa. We covered on last week's show how Hassan Per has been painted as persona on grata by the US media due to his opposition to Israel's genocide. Hassan and El Say appeared together on the campaign trail during the Democratic primary, including El appearing on his Twitch broadcast, and immediately the press were turning the Michigan Senate election into a referendum on a Twitch streamer rather than on Trump or on the cost of living crisis. Elsa's reticence to condemn Hassan has led to a reaction of bewilderment from the mainstream media, including this incredulous article from former CNN reporter turned independent journalist Chris Citiz. Elsa has pissed away, that is the technical term, almost a month of his general election campaign against former Republican representative Mike Rogers by continuing to equivocate about his ties to provocator and streamer Hassan Per. Why Elsa has not walked away from PA as Georgia Senator John Osaf has done is utterly incomprehensible to me and raises uncomfortable questions about what Els believes and is willing to do to hold a Senate seat that is absolutely critical to Democrats making a real run at the Senate majority in 9 weeks time. Uh it's not difficult for us, Chris, it's not difficult for us to realize that actually a referendum on a Twitch streamer is not what anybody cares about. uh the fact that you seem to think that there needs to be a public statement about his relationship to a Twitch streamer, it seems to be a bit of a you problem rather than the problem of the people who are voting on policy or who are voting on Senate control or who are voting on any other things that they want to do so other than the character of Hassan Per. Now, if that didn't seem out of touch enough already, wait until you hear what Celita had to say about why he thought El refused to disavow Hassan Paher. That article goes on to say this, which raises the really important question. Why has El Say not said something like, "Hassan and I see eye to eye on some issues, but his attacks on Jewish Americans are simply a bridge too far. I do not want him associated in any way with my campaign going forward." The way I see it, there are three obvious answers to that question. One, he is stubborn and doesn't want to admit he was wrong about PA. Two, he thinks the political class, like me, don't know anything and that this Per thing is all much to do about nothing. or three, he agrees in the main with Piker's views on Israel in the broader Middle East. I think you'll find Chris that a the political class does no less than nothing, otherwise they'd know people care about the cost of living crisis, as I said, and b most Democrats agree with Hassan about Israel, given that they overwhelmingly think it's enacted a genocide in Gaza and support sanctions and embargos, something that the political class just refused to acknowledge. Not even the UK media could resist reviving some Corbyn era hysterics either with Emily Mateless saying this on Global Media's news agents podcast. But where this came from is essentially not anything that El Say himself has said, but in the company that he has kept and I think frankly there are more than just a few Democrats who have a real issue with the people that have been endorsing him. Okay, let's put it that way. One of them is Hassan Paher, who is this Twitcher streamer who is really pretty far out actually when it comes to views on um October the 7th, views on 9/11, views on where he would put um I guess the you know the the sort of the the left-wing vote. He's made people really uncomfortable with some of his I think we're going to say anti-Semitic views, aren't we? I mean, I think at this point, you know, pretty pretty clear. And just before um the Michigan primary, Elsa was out with PA and he was kind of on the campaign with him. And it's always this curious thing, isn't it? You know, when when Donald Trump had the Klux Clan kind of former, you know, chief campaigning for him and Trump had to go, "Oh, he's nothing to do with me. He's nothing to do with me. He just likes what I do." That in that is in a sense where say has been with Perah, right? He endorses me. It doesn't mean that I endorse him, but subsequent interviews have kept on asking say if he will distance himself from perah and I don't know what you think, but I've watched some of those responses and I think say has got pretty uh ratty with that question. He's tried to push it away. He's tried to say, "Oh, come on." You know, Hassan Ple has has um has taken back his own words on 911. He's taken back his own words on October the 7th. Um, but >> I don't want to talk about California streamer. >> It's all it's all in the past. But it's kind of it's pursued him to a point where it clearly rattles him enough for him to say he's not going to go campaigning with per anymore. Right. And I think that is where that is that is what has left a bit of a taste in the mouth for some Democrats who kind of go, "Yeah, we love the progressive stuff. That's fine. We love the healthcare stuff. That's fine. We don't even mind the socialist label. That's all fine. We don't really want you hanging out with people who who feel like anti-American in in the in the language that they're using and and definitely anti-Semitic. I don't think if you if you if you missed that at home, she just compared Hassan Per to former grand wizard of the KKK, David Duke. What do I even say? Like what do I even say when again he'd even say anything anti-semitic? You know, people just clipped something out of context. Speaking of not being in context, at no point during any of that, and you can watch the whole podcast at home if you really want to to make sure that I'm not taking her out of context, she didn't even explain or say what this supposed anti-semitism that Hassan Piger had done was. No information for her audience, who again probably don't even know who Hassan Piger is, given that it's mostly like a bunch of middle-class podcast addicts in the UK who listen to the news agents. like none of them know who he is and she hasn't even bothered to elucidate at all what this supposed anti-semitism was and then went on to compare him to I repeat former grand wizard of the KKK David Duke Dalia it seems like Islamophobia is just the kind of bigotry that's just allowed now >> I mean what's the difference between a comment on a Twitch stream and you know dragging black people out of their homes and lynching them I these two things are the same to me I am a centrist equivalent. >> Unbel unbelievable. Um I So there are two things here. The first thing is this idea that Abdul sayed has wasted time uh on his campaign defending his ties to Hassan Pika. I want to be very clear Abdul um El Say has wasted no one's time. The media have wasted everyone's time by insisting that that is the story of this election. by refusing to address the actual substantive offering by both of these candidates and making this all about Hassan [ __ ] cuz I can guarantee you the comments made by a streamer in California is not an organic concern of people in Michigan. So, but that that is really the point. The media doesn't want to address the politics. The media doesn't want to cover the fact that this is a candidate who has promised Medicare for all, a candidate who has promised to take corporate money out of politics. You know, a candidate that has, you know, talked about taxing billionaire wealth, that this is a candidate that is showing that you can oppose ar um arm sales to Israel and that you can win an election in the US without taking corporate money. I think that that is the thing that scares them the most. This I because >> outspent 10 to1 by Steven. >> Exactly. that cuz the the line has always been well you can't win without corporate money so we have to take corporate money but the success of people like Zoran Mani is that it shows that actually you can win without taking corporate money so taking corporate money is a choice and it's a compromising choice but the media can't ignore Elsai because he's you know the democratic nominee so instead what they the strategy is to bury the real issue under noise so that they don't have to talk about the politics so that they can conceal what actually matters um from the public. Um but that then brings me to kind of CBS because we're talking the me about the media is these quite abstract things. CBS we have a concrete example of how this operates. So CBS the the appointment of Barry Weiss as editor-inchief. you know, the idea that she was sort of directly involved in constructing this headline that was in me, you know, clearly very misleading and clearly had a political um ideological agenda and and and a and a very um what's the word? Disinguous. Uh >> it was literally just like here's 911, here's Abd. >> Exactly. And you know, obviously people are talking about this as serious journalistic misconduct, which it is, but Barry Weiss was not hired to be a journalist. She is not a journalist. She's not a reporter. She has no history in broadcast. She's a pundit, right? She's she's an a professional opinion, right? And journalism is a practice. You are meant to be ostensibly tied to some kind of journalistic code and training, right? Which Barry Weiss doesn't even purport to have. Um, but that is why, you know, she was put in power in in CBS in in charge of the editorial line of CBS as part of a right-wing coup of broadcast media, particularly news media in the United States. And of course, I'm talking here about the purchasing of CBS by a single billionaire family, which, you know, takes over one of the uh most trusted broadcaster in the United States. You and I might not trust it, but mo a lot of people in the country do. And this is a family that has a very explicit political agenda. This is a family that has very close ties with MAGA, that has funded, you know, donated to, um, uh, Trump's campaign, that has very, very close ties not just with Israel, but with Netanyahu himself. Um, and this is only the start. you know, they have got a deal in, you know, over a hundred billion dollar deal to um to purchase um Warner Bros. Warner Brothers, which would mean that then CNN would now be under the control of this this billionaire family, which is, as far as I am aware, the the most significant consolidation of media infrastructure under the power of a single billionaire family. And we see the consequences of that and the way in which that has directly shaped the editorial line in the appointment um of of of Barry [snorts] Weiss and and the way in which they plan to use the media to secure political particular political um outcomes. And we can see this not only in this headline but even in the way that CBS was restructured because typically an editor-inchief like Barry Weiss, she's supposed to report to like the head of TV, you know, a broadcasting professional. She does not report directly to that anymore. They changed it so that she reports directly to the Ellison family. Now in the US media in particular, there has always been a very compromisingly close relationship between corporate power, the state, and the media, it's always been bad, right? But when you have an editor-inchief of a major broadcasting channel directly reporting to the corporate head, right? the the people who own the organization that represents a complete closing of that gap. Like we don't even have that slight little breathing room that is required for journalistic integrity. We have got a direct collapse of corporate ownership and and and an editorial line. And the thing that pisses me off the most about Miss Barry Weiss as well is that she makes this meal out of like I'm this heterodox brave thinker, you know, I I'm not afraid to speak truth to power. what she's talking about. Basically, she's like, "I'm a a woman. I am a lesbian and I'm Jewish. So, that means that you would look at me and you would think that I was on the left, but actually I'm not. I'm actually conservative." Like, what are her politics? The main two pillars of her politics are ardent Zionism and anti-woke moral panics. Congratulations, babe. You are square within the establishment, you know, political [laughter] status quo. Like, there's nothing brave about holding those positions. Like, you're just a conservative. There's nothing brave, but but she's able to kind of create this vision of herself as being this brave hetradox woman um you know thinker when actually that's all very surface. She's not even a trained journalist. >> And that's the thing again. It's just the level to which I think there's been loads of people who are in her kind of similar position who've had their brains fried by opposition to >> I don't want to act like it was all great before. I don't want to act like CBS or these these fountains of journalistic integrity. I've just finished watching um I watched the other day um Amy Goodman's film um about which kind of traces the history of democracy now and traces the history of her career and you could really see there that like it's kind of always been a bit of a farce but I think the the complete the complete closing of that gap between corporate ownership and editorial line sets like an an obscene precedent and it's why independent media is so important >> and you can subscribe to help independent media at novaria.com/ >> [laughter] >> support. An excellent an excellent little segway there. And I was interesting the comparison between the the vibe shift in Barry Vice compared to Tim Miller and Sarah Longwell. They are former Republican strategists, right? They were formerly of the party that you know there was the you know the the more racist party out of the two parties in the United States, right? And everything that's happened over the past, you know, um I guess 10 years now since Donald Trump first became president. And now they're talking about how it's insane the level of racism about Islamophobia like calling out I mean the the whole media landscape in being bigoted towards Abdul Elsa in a way that you would never have seen from those kind of people before. They the the the level to which that so many people have just had their minds changed in this period of political turmoil. This upending of former coalitions I find super interesting. Like I even saw Tucker Carlson in a clip when he was in viewing Saga and Jetty essentially say can never vote for Mike Rogers by doing like a not necessarily an endorsement of El Say but saying that you know implying that he would rather vote for him because of like just how horrendous Israel and the genocide has changed his mind on politics. It's a really interesting time to be to be a journalist. >> Yeah. And I think what's really tricky about it is this crop of politicians who are winning on different terms. They are winning with different stakeholders. And that's really scary because once you start to show that it is possible to win electoral power to win elections without bending the knee to corporate power then the kind of the entire disciplinary mechanism that has been established over the past like 20 years becomes much more fragile you know >> and again like people who like you look at the Chris Elita thing there who he just he had this assumption about what people cared about because of what the whole of the kind of media sphere that he lived in this bubble that he lived in this echo chamber and like well obviously he has to condemn Asan Parker people do care about this is a big important thing for the election obviously it wasn't a big thing for the election and he literally cannot comprehend that things are different than that and the same is true from the way in which the media is approaching these changing stakeholders and it is how people understand who those stakeholders are that will change the face of very partisan journalism in the United States I think certainly for years to