Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, is currently over 20 points ahead of his nearest general election rival, Andrew Cuomo, who he already obliterated during the primary. Despite this, Cuomo has yet to slither back into the cavern of slime and obscurity which most assuredly awaits him in the near future. His latest attempt to jumpstart his raspy, dying cough of a campaign? Concern trolling over Mamdani’s decision to appear on a Twitch stream earlier this year.
Yesterday, near the World Trade Center memorial, Cuomo accepted the endorsement of a 9/11 first responder who now has cancer, Sal Turturici, and his wife, Wendi. Behind them stood two conspicuous pieces of posterboard: one displaying a picture of leftist Twitch streamer Hasan “HasanAbi” Piker and his infamous “America deserved 9/11” quote from 2019 and another with two pictures of Mamdani and Piker clasping hands during their April 2025 stream together. Sans context, which is the way these sorts of things tend to travel around the internet, this made for an odd scene.
In a release from Cuomo’s camp commemorating the occasion, Wendi lambasted Mamdani for talking to one of the few authentically consequential influencers on the left.
“I know firsthand what kind of leader Andrew Cuomo is,” she said. “As Governor, he fought to secure benefits for 9/11 families, and he treated our community with the respect and dignity we deserve. That’s the kind of leadership New York City needs again. … His opponent, Zohran Mamdani, proudly associates with Hasan Piker, a man who said ‘America deserved 9/11.’ To families like mine, that’s not politics, that’s life and death. His association with Hasan Piker disqualifies him to serve in any role for New York City, let alone one as important as Mayor. I am calling on Zohran Mamdani to disavow Hasan Piker and his hateful words.”
This elicited predictable headlines from the usual suspects, like the New York Post, which came in extra hot with “Terminally-ill 9/11 hero blasts Zohran Mamdani for associating with terror sympathizer Hasan Piker."
Piker has taken flack for his “America deserved 9/11” line for years, despite being correct. There is no point in relitigating it, so I’ll let my own book (Stream Big, in stores now) do it for me:
In 2019, Twitch suspended [Piker’s] channel for seven days after he said, “America deserved 9/11,” igniting a full-on Fox News firestorm fronted by Republican congressman Dan Crenshaw. Granted, Piker made it personal by joking about Crenshaw’s eye during a Twitch stream (Crenshaw is a war veteran who’s missing an eye), but the bulk of his commentary was in response to Crenshaw’s assertion on an episode of the Joe Rogan podcast that prior to 9/11, Bin Laden had no reason to hate America except our “Western ideology” and that “millions” in places like Yemen and Iraq were “begging” for further United States intervention. Piker took issue with that, blaming America’s destabilizing foreign policies in the Middle East, which helped arm the groups that eventually became the Taliban and Al Qaeda, for sowing the seeds of 9/11. “We fucking totally brought it on ourselves, dude,” Piker said at the time. “We fucking did. Holy shit. Look at the way that this dipshit is running his fucking mouth, justifying genocide right now.”
This is not an uncommon set of beliefs among those who oppose American imperialism, but what Piker said—and the way he said it—was red meat to Fox’s red state crowd. Crenshaw and Fox News host Laura Ingraham largely used his comments as fodder for a conversation about how leftism is anti-American, ignoring the substance of Piker’s criticism and mocking how he spoke. It was a perfect snapshot of how difficult it can be to actually discuss thorny topics on the modern internet, especially from a socialist perspective in a country whose default is militaristic patriotism. In almost no time at all, Piker’s words were taken out of context by opportunists on Twitter and YouTube, who in turn escalated them up the opportunism food chain to Fox News. The end result was a game of telephone where everybody was screaming at the same time. Then everybody moved on, because nobody actually cared. It was all dust in the wind, all content in the end.
Since then, Piker has gone on to regularly advocate for Palestinians in the face of Israel’s genocide, which has prompted a “terror sympathizer” label from various politicans, media types, and influencers despite observable reality.
Piker and others have called out Cuomo’s latest stunt for what it is: a sweaty, desperate ploy for relevance from a campaign that’s grasping at straws (when it’s not copying its supposed existentially threatening enemy outright).
“These guys are incredibly desperate, and they’ll get even more racist as the election nears,” Piker said during a recent stream. “I suspect that they’ll do a big push around 9/11 as well to try to, like, associate Zohran Mamdani with 9/11, because they’re just leaning on Islamophobia. That’s it. Zohran is Muslim. They’re trying to fucking be like: ‘Yeah, Muslim guy kind of did 9/11. His people did 9/11. Remember 9/11? His people did it. Do you want an insider to do 9/11 again?’”
“Judge me by my enemies,” Piker added on Twitter, referencing Cuomo. “Another sex pest.”
Other political content creators asked a salient question: Who is this even for?
"Imagine you are a New Yorker who knows who Hasan Piker is,” said the Majority Report’s Sam Seder during a recent broadcast. “When you see that picture of him with Zohran Mamdani, is your reaction going to be 'Oh my god, Mamdani has shook hands or had sat down at a table with Hasan Piker?’ Is your reaction gonna be like 'Oh my god, Zohran I was thinking of voting for, but Hasan Piker? Oh my god, that's terrifying.' This is so out of touch. It's fascinating."
"They're trying to audition for Zionist donors who hate Hasan," replied cohost Emma Vigeland.
"The only person above the age of 45 in New York City who knows who Hasan Piker is,” said Seder, “is the guy from the ADL.”
New York City voters are significantly more sympathetic to Palestinians than they are to Israel.
In a statement to NY Mag, Mamdani’s campaign pulled no punches.
“Andrew Cuomo knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s holding a press conference to suggest that Zohran Mamdani – who is poised to become New York’s first Muslim mayor – somehow supported 9/11. It’s vile, it’s dangerous, and it’s deliberate,” the campaign wrote. “Cuomo would rather you forget his own record: that he had to be pressured into ever setting foot in a mosque, that he’s repeatedly trafficked in Islamophobia when it suited him politically, that he’s used Muslims as convenient punching bags for decades. New Yorkers can see this for what it is – a cynical attempt to recycle the ugliest playbook in our politics. Cuomo is not protecting the memory of 9/11 victims; he’s once again desecrating it by weaponizing grief and pain for his own ambition.”
