Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed said the effort to tie him to demonized streamer Hasan Piker is a distraction during an appearance this morning on The Breakfast Club”:

ABDUL EL-SAYED: I think we’ve got to stop with the cancel culture. It’s not about, like, where are you on this one individual? It’s more: Do you agree or disagree with the thing that the person said? And the thing about it is that, like, when we play as if the whole person can be reduced down to a single soundbite that you took out of context, you’re not dealing with real life. That’s not how real life works. I love my wife dearly. Do I agree with her on everything? No. Do I agree with everything I’ve always said? No. My opinions, positions change. So the point that I’m making is, it’s not about distancing from an individual. It’s about saying, here’s the thing I disagree with. And also, the attempt that they’re using right now is to make this entire campaign – Mike Rogers, who I’m running against, has nothing to say about anything. And so his whole thing is, let me tie these two people together, and then we’ll try to push a cancel war against the one to cancel the other. That’s his whole campaign strategy. And here’s the thing about it: My campaign has never been about a streamer in California. He doesn’t speak for me. I don’t speak for him. There are a lot of things he says that I deeply agree with: People deserve health care. We shouldn’t be fighting dumb wars. The war in Iran is ridiculous. Donald Trump is a fascist. All true. There are things he said I disagree with. There are things he said he now disagrees with. And so I just don’t think about it as the, like, Are you distancing yourself from a person? et cetera, et cetera. The whole discourse is intended to confuse and distract us from the actual issue. He never spoke for me. I don’t speak for him. He has his opinions. I have mine. There’s a lot of them I agree with. There are some of them that I don’t. But the campaign for us is about getting money out of politics, putting money in your pocket, passing Medicare for All. It’s about what we can build together in Michigan, and they’re attempting to distract us by taking us back to the cancel culture of the 2000s and trying to play that game again. And I’m just going to say that I remember the whole, like, Rogan discourse: Should have gone on Rogan. Do you know who was invited to campaign with Vice President Harris at the DNC? Hasan Piker, who had said at that point all the things that they’re working to try and cancel him on. So I’m against cancel culture. And instead of playing the cancel culture gotcha game, I’m interested in parsing out the things people have said as they’ve said them and deciding whether I agree or disagree. But nobody speaks for me but me, right? And my spokespeople.

Here’s El-Sayed’s full appearance on “The Breakfast Club”:
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