Hasan Piker Will Never Run for Office

The Joe Rogan of the Left; the poster child for antisemitism; Woke Bae. Hasan Piker is many things to many people. They don’t all feel the same way about Piker or his politics, but most presumably agree on one thing: He is a relentless human being.

Most days a week, you can find the 34-year-old Twitch streamer talking to his audience, often for six to nine hours at a stretch. Most of that time, he’s discussing and reacting to the news. And during President Trump’s second term, there’s plenty of that to go around.

Of course, Piker isn’t speaking into the void. He has nearly 3 million followers on Twitch and has hosted conversations with Senator Bernie Sanders and US representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He claims his election night stream in 2024 reached a staggering 7.5 million viewers. On this episode of Big Interview, I talked to Piker about his looks, his love of Italian sandwiches, and any future political aspirations he might (or might not) want to tease.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

KATIE DRUMMOND: Hello, Hasan.

HASAN PIKER: Hi. It's great to be here.

I heard you were just at the gym. How was that?

Yeah, I was at the park. Some days I take my dog and I play a little bit of basketball and get to hang out with some people. See what the normies are talking about.

What were they talking about today?

We talk a lot about Israel. I feel like a lot of normies, at least that I hang out with, they oftentimes will be talking about foreign policy, which is surprising and unexpected for sure.

But other than that, not much. The other day it was about something silly. Trump was on the roof of the White House, and that was like a big deal for some people. I just don't really understand why.

I think it was a big deal on the internet because it was a very funny picture.

It was a funny picture.

So look, we always start these conversations with some very fast questions to warm up. Are you ready?

I'm ready.

What was your first online screen name?

Oh my God. Uh, it was Hasso Fadir. It was like “Hasan father,” but in a Turkish way of saying “father” in English.

It's not the Turkish word for “father,” because that's baba, but it was spelled out in the way that a Turkish person would say “father.”

Mine was Miss Pickle. What’s the first piece of tech you use after you wake up?

My phone.

Last piece of tech you look at before you go to bed.

Still my phone.

Last text message you sent.

Let's see. It was to my friend Emma Vigeland. She's cohost of The Majority Report who said, “You're gonna be in Chicago?? Let's collaborate. I fly out tonight.” I said, “Same.”

Are you gonna collaborate?

Yeah.

All right. What's your favorite sandwich?

That's a tough one because I love all of them. I would say a New Jersey sub from this institution called Sorrento’s around Freehold. A Number 14, which is a combination, I believe, of like Number 7 and Number 12. [Eds. note: Sorrento’s menu says the Number 14 is a combo of a Number 5 and a Number 12 called the Pig Special.] So an Italian sub from a real New Jersey institution, and if not that, then a Wawa Club sandwich.

I really appreciate how specific that was. Thank you. First video game you ever bought?

I pirated a lot because I was in Turkey growing up, so it was virtually impossible for us to get like a lot of video games. As far as purchase, it could be Metal Gear Solid 2 for the PlayStation 2, or I guess a Pokémon game.

So let’s rewind 34 years. You were born in New Jersey. You spent the majority of your childhood in Turkey.

Yeah.

You've talked before about that upbringing. You've characterized it as a very privileged one. How did that experience, now that you're able to look back and reflect, affect your worldview? How does that turn you into the person that you are today?

There’s massive income inequality in Turkey that almost resembles America now, but that’s still far worse in Turkey. For that reason, if you’re above board, if you’re relatively affluent, you come across as very wealthy in comparison to the average person.

I’ve never sheltered people from that truth, but I did grow up fairly affluent. It was very positive in the sense that I didn’t have to worry about making ends meet or having to take on a job or anything like that. My parents’ main concern was to make sure that I wasn't spoiled, so I didn't get everything I wanted.

Outside of that, I would say that as a young boy I was sent to public school in Turkey. I think it was a good thing that my parents did that because it made me understand that there were very different income brackets with people living in very different conditions.

You moved to the United States for college, right? What was surprising to you about that transition?

When I came to college, this is literally what I wanted. Other people were like, “I want to be an astronaut,” “I want to be a teacher,” “I want to be a race car driver.” I was like, “I want to go to college in America.”

So I loved it. I was so stoked to be here, and I had all of these beliefs. You know, this is a land of freedom, land of prosperity, right?

Right.

This is where I’m gonna make a name for myself, make a career for myself.

Slowly but surely, experiences growing up or going to college and then onwards living in America, slowly chipped away at that dream. Piece by piece.

Yeah.

It’s interesting because in comparison to other fresh-off-the-boat immigrant stories, I did it. I am living the American dream, but I just realized that it’s not something that is readily accessible for all.

In my job running WIRED—and especially running WIRED since Trump was reelected—I worry about my family’s safety and well-being. Obviously I worry about my staff. Do you worry about your family given the high-profile nature of your job and how outspoken you are?

Oh, yeah. All the time. But it's not new.

Yeah, sure.

It’s not new for me. For two reasons. One, because if you’ve been a visible figure on the left and you’ve been a commentator on the left online, no matter what size you are, you’ve experienced doxing and death threats. This is something that is just in the backdrop at this point in my career. I’ve been taking it on the chin for stuff like this since 2014.

The other reason why I say I’m used to it is because I’m Turkish, and the Turkish government is very restrictive with what you can and can’t say. In the past, I’ve been directly called up and threatened by the Turkish government for an article I wrote for the Huffington Post about the coup.

Oh.

[They] demanded that I write another one that was in favor of Turkey. I didn’t do it. But because my whole family still lives in Turkey, that is still very much a threat.

I have enough privilege and enough money to be able to defend my family and myself against such things. There are so many people who are defenseless, who get swept away in the process. So I try to speak for them to the best of my ability.

What does your family think about what you do?

They like it. They weren’t big fans of it at first. They didn’t fully understand what it was. By the time I started taking care of them financially, they were just like, “Alright, it’s fine.”

I’m the black sheep of my family. I’m the only one with an undergraduate degree only. My dad and my mom both have PhDs. My brother has a master’s in engineering. So they’re all very credentialed. My dad used to always tell me, “When are you going to go back to school? When are you going to get a PhD? When are you going to get a real job?” Those phone calls stopped at a certain point, and I would say that's after I started financially taking care of the whole family.

Back in May, you were detained coming back into the United States. You then shared that your Global Entry credential was revoked by the Department of Homeland Security. You’ve been targeted before, but that felt categorically new and different.

Oh, for sure.

Do you feel safe living and working in the United States right now?

I mean, yes and no. I feel safer than I would in many other parts of the world still, right?

Right.

But having said that, I certainly don't feel as safe as I did 10 years ago or five years ago. Because there's a difference, I think, with right-wing, neo-Nazi circuits coming after you versus the actual federal government actively putting a target on your back. I think that is definitely a little bit more terrifying because when they do it, it's legal, right?

Yeah.

As someone who has seen what that looks like in Turkey, this is definitely a scary predicament. My family certainly thinks so, and they don't want me to continue doing it in America, but I'm too stubborn to leave.

I'm gonna pivot a little bit. What drew you to Twitch in the first place? You were on YouTube, right?

I was on YouTube for the Young Turks.

Yes, right.

I was on Facebook primarily for the Young Turks as well. But I wanted to make my own thing, I wanted to make my own community and have a place that I could go and have it as my own thing. I play video games already, so I was like, you know what? I'm playing a lot of Fortnite—might as well maximize this time. I was playing with a bunch of other content creators, a bunch of other journalists and podcasters.

Got it.

So I was already playing Fortnite with those guys and shooting the shit, talking politics. Anyway, I might as well strap a camera to my PlayStation 4 and just go live on Twitch. That's precisely what I did for like the first couple of months. Then I upgraded it.

I don't watch you for six to nine hours a day because I have a job, but I've seen enough to know that this is an endurance sport. How much of this is planned ahead of time and how much of this is just freewheeling and seeing where those nine hours take you?

It's a bit of both. I have a skeleton in mind for what I'm going to talk about every single day. There's top-level stories that I'm definitely interested in getting to, and for that reason I'll have an idea of what I'm definitely going to cover.

Right.

But throughout the day as events unfold, of course, I don't have all my talking points readily assigned ahead of time, and there's definitely a much more open communication format that I have in my chat.

What do you read, listen to, and watch? What’s your news diet in 2025?

Everything. From TikTok to, unfortunately, Twitter, even though Twitter is bad and insanely unreliable for that purpose. Twitter used to be my primary way to just download the news, and it's gone. It doesn't function in that way anymore.

As far as mainstream publications go, it’s NPR, The New York Times, CNN, NBC, everything.

How much do you worry about context? You're streaming for hours and hours a day, days on end. You are talking about, often, very contentious subjects, right? Your words can be taken out of context very easily.

And they are.

How much do you try to control or redirect that narrative versus just logging on the next day and doing your thing and just letting it run?

I used to try and take control over that narrative quite a bit.

Did it work?

I realized that that was probably a mistake. Because a lot of people that do that are doing that maliciously, like they are not genuinely interested in offering constructive criticism or genuinely interested in addressing a misunderstanding. In most circumstances they're just doing that specifically so they can professionally misunderstand you and present your position as the exact opposite in many instances.

There's an entire cottage industry dedicated to doing that. I think I offered it a lot of legitimacy by responding and being like, “Hey guys, no, you got this wrong. This is what I actually meant.”

In that process I realized that a lot of those same people would just turn around and make more content off that response, where they would be like, “Oh, he’s having a hard time coping,” or they wouldn't believe me.

Right.

I encompassed this broad range of ideology that they despise, and became like a figurehead that they could attack to basically position themselves as against the left without openly saying that they’re against the left.

So you have your detractors, but you also have a lot of fans. Why do you think people like you?

I communicate the anger that they feel in their hearts about the way that the system is designed.

Some people say, it’s because [I’m] attractive. “It’s your looks” or whatever. I'm like, “Thank you for saying that. That's very nice of you.” But I think it's mostly because I try to fill the role other commentators filled for me when I was growing up as a young boy, interested in politics, interested in American politics in particular, when I saw people like Jon Stewart or like political satirists that I read in Turkey who helped me understand the world a little bit better.

Got it.

So, in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online to the best of my ability, which, like I said, draws a lot of enmity from these very successful corners of the internet.

I wanna ask you about the Democrats. I want to ask you about the idea that has been floating around since Trump won, that they have to find their Joe Rogan. I saw an interview you did recently where I think you said something like, the Democrats don’t need their own Joe Rogan, they need better policies.

Yeah, that's the thing that I’ve consistently stated over and over again, which seemingly no one hears for some reason. It’s just like, you can't podcast your way out of this problem.

Talk to us a little bit more about the problem as you see it.

The Democrats don’t just have a marketing problem. The Democrats are just a bad political party. When I say that, I don't mean evil in the same way that the Republicans are an evil political party. Right? Republicans have bad policy, but good politics.

Mm-hmm.

What I mean by that is they are very good at utilizing the political machine, setting up wedge issues, really hammering in those wedge issues in an effort to create some kind of mobilization or momentum around a legislative agenda.

That is horrifying. That’s the bad policy. Democrats, on the other hand, are supposed to have good policy and bad politics, but they don’t even have good policy. They have bad policy and bad politics, so when I say they’re bad at their jobs, they're bad at being the counterbalance to growing fascism in this country. They’re bad at being the opposition party.

How so?

They’re not defined by a couple key signature policies that everyone could champion. Medicare for all is a great example of this. Free college is another one.

Obviously, focusing on the cost of living crisis that Americans are facing right now is what Trump did, at least when he was campaigning.

Right.

Clearly, he is not invested in fixing that at all, but at least he campaigned on that.

Trump was even able to campaign as somewhat of an anti-war figure as opposed to Kamala Harris, which is so crazy to me.

Crazy because that’s not true. That was never going to be true. But the only reason people were foolish enough to believe him is because the Democrats were actively messaging that they were going to continue death and destruction. Kamala said she was going to be responsible for the most lethal military in American history at the DNC. That's not a thing that any Democrat should ever say.

Let me ask you this. You can snap your fingers and get the Democrats out of the mess that they've created for themselves …

OK.

… get the GOP outta the White House in 2028. What has to happen? What is the revolutionary change that transforms this very hopeless dynamic that I think a lot of people are feeling right now?

Everyone behaves like [New York City mayoral candidate] Zohran Mamdani, like everyone get more radical now. I’m not even alone on this. White, liberal wine moms are demanding that Hakeem Jeffries put his body on the line to stop these deportations, to stop these mass firings taking place at federal regulatory agencies.

We need to start putting labor first. We need to start putting the working class first and foremost.

If the Democrats don’t do that, cynical Republicans will take advantage of the void that the Democrats leave in the media to present themselves as the actual populists, because they do that all the time. Trump did that.

Mm.

Trump said, I’m not cutting Medicaid, I’m not cutting Medicare. I’m not touching any of that. Not touching Social Security. Then $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid coming after this new tax cuts for the wealthy package, the [“One Big Beautiful Bill”] that he passed. The very fact that he ran on not doing that thing that he’s now doing still means that they recognize that left populist messaging is very valuable.

I’ll give you another example: Israel. Eight percent of Democrat voters say they like what Israel is doing. Yet, if you were to look at the Democratic party’s politicians, if you were to look at the organs of media, you would assume that everyone is on board with what Israel is doing. Or maybe a little bit critical about it. Every now and then a little bit of condemnation here and there. That’s not reflective of the anger that people have in their hearts for this barbaric campaign of death and destruction.

So someone’s gonna take advantage of that. Who’s taking advantage of that void in discourse? Tucker Carlson. Who’s taking advantage of that void in leadership? Marjorie Taylor Greene. People who have their ear to the ground who understand that this issue will get them tremendous support.

What does the US in 2025 under Trump look like to you? What words would you use and what do you think that Americans don’t understand adequately, or maybe don’t understand yet about living in a country where democracy is a question mark and not a sure thing anymore?

I’ve never thought that we’ve had a true democratic process anyway, because of the issues that I brought up about health care and whatnot. These are things that people want and yet they never seem to get them, right? That's a part of the reason why I think the liberal democratic process that we have here in America and in many other Western countries is simply a pressure valve to make people feel like they participate in this process, to make people feel like their voice is heard to a certain degree so they don’t revolt.

Because countries that have more quote-unquote authoritarian means of governance are constantly susceptible to rebellion. Whereas I think liberal democracy has that pressure valve so that people just go, “Well, I voted, I did my thing.” And we still have the democratic process here. Like our voices are still heard.

Yes.

Now I feel like that’s falling apart. But I think the apt comparison of 2025 America is the dissolution of the USSR, because it was death by a thousand cuts. But I think the USSR ultimately engaged in self-destruction, where numerous Western-affiliated and connected officials—there were high-ranking government officials basically picking apart the carcass of the state for profit as they recognized that liberalization was coming—took advantage of this. As a means to increase their wealth and power. The Russian Federation is run by those guys, the oligarchs.

That's kind of what we're doing here as well. It is a self-inflicted wound born out of just pure greed with no counterbalance whatsoever. No alternative vision for where society could evolve towards. I think a lot of people have succumbed to nihilism for understandable reasons, because they feel like their voices are not heard.

So they try to keep going by engaging in commodity consumption and watching movies and watching TikTok clips and just trying to make ends meet. And then hopefully feel a semblance of humanity in the very few moments that they have to themselves.

This is not a gotcha question, it’s genuinely something that I think about and grapple with. WIRED publishes on Facebook, we rely on Google search. We’re intertwined with all of these technology companies, and we cover them on a daily basis. You publish on Twitch; you don’t own and control that platform. It’s ultimately owned by Amazon. You publish on Instagram, which is owned by Meta.

Mm-hmm.

It has not always been a smooth road for you at Twitch. You were banned for a period, I think 24 hours, a couple months ago. What are the interactions like with the platform, and have you ever thought about standing something up that would give you more independence?

It’s certainly something that I’ve thought about, but unfortunately my job as a communicator is to be as accessible as possible.

Right.

Outside of the numerous complications of launching an initiative such as that one, it would also be impossible to do so without using AWS. So then you go back to Amazon.

As a political commentator that is outside of the political duopoly that exists in this country, I’m always thinking about the threat of deplatforming, right?

Yeah.

The reality of the matter is I just have to play ball with these big corporations to a certain degree because I still do generate a lot of revenue for them. So I think that is the value that I bring to the table. Not only do I generate a lot of revenue for them, I generate a lot of positive marketing for them. Because if all of the top content creators were just little creatures that were constantly saying insanely toxic things and insanely hateful things, I think advertisers would probably not like that as much.

What do you make of the conversations about your appearance? I looked at your Instagram. Hasan, you are shirtless often. So you seem to embrace this part of your fandom, this part of the conversation.

I mean, I’m just who I am, right? I don't do it as a marketing technique or whatever. I grew up very fat, so once I was able to lose this weight and achieve certain goals that I had set for myself fitness-wise, I wanted to influence others to also be able to do the same and to lead healthy lives.

But I’m sure that there’s plenty of people who go, “That dude is hot,” and thank you. I’ll take it.

But the thing is with The New York Times [story], I don’t think The New York Times is ever going to do that because like my politics are, especially when it comes to foreign policy, fairly antagonistic …

Mm-hmm.

… to The New York Times. And while there are incredible journalists there, some of them are my very good friends who work tirelessly to try to break certain stories and maybe even get pushback. I think this is basically a way for some people to just try to get me more mainstream prominence.

Sure.

So I’ll take it. I was on Time’s 100 Most Influential list recently. I call it terrorism insurance because there are always a lot of publications, far-right publications, that are actively trying to get me deplatformed.

So when I have these sorts of media opportunities, I take them because it makes those guys look silly.

You’re talking about strategic positioning, which brings me to my last question. You’ve been doing this for 12 years. That is a long fucking time to be streaming on the internet. What do you envision for the next phase of your career?

I don’t see myself doing anything other than this anytime soon. I love this. I’m a very stubborn person, and I don't take for granted the fortune that I’ve had.

Do you think about running for office?

No.

Never.

Never, never.

Well, you have a big platform and strongly held views, so it doesn’t not make sense.

But there is no media ecosystem that would prop someone like myself up.

OK. I’ll check back in with you in 20 years. Now, we’re gonna play a really quick game. It’s called Control, Alt, Delete. I want to know what piece of tech would you love to control? What piece would you alt, so alter or change, and what would you delete? What would you vanquish from the earth if given the opportunity?

Delete all of the LLMs, all of them gone. No more AI, no more fucking language models. Bye-bye. No more. Bye-bye to all the image generator things that are just destroying the planet so that people can have those yellow-hue, gross AI images that they can churn out. Done. That’s easy.

OK.

As far as control, I would control TikTok. That's what I would control.

What would you do with that?

I would control TikTok to turn it into the pro-socialist, anti-imperialist propaganda apparatus that every boomer parent thinks it is. Be like, “Oh, you got a septum piercing and you’re talking about how rent must be abolished?” Boom. A hundred thousand likes, you’re in front of every wine mom.

This is a good answer. Alt?

Alter Twitter. Bring woke back. That’s what I would do. Bring woke Twitter back.

I’d rather be canceled a million times for, I don’t know, saying something that someone perceived as remotely ableist or something. I’d rather be canceled every day than have to fucking deal with the neo-Nazis posting Adolf Hitler fan cams and getting hundreds of thousands of likes.

It’s not even just that. It’s just like all bots. My feed is filled to the brim with the worst videos of all time. Not just violent ones, just really stupid ones.

You know what I did with my account is I deleted it so that I don't have to look at it anymore.

I can’t do that, because unfortunately it’s a primary mode of communication for an international consortium of journalists. Like, I talk to reporters in Gaza on this platform. There's no other alternative out there that I can use. It sucks.

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