‘Go Away!’ Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell Savages Hasan Piker for Hurting Abdul El-Sayed Campaign

Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) tore into controversial streamer Hasan Piker, telling him to “go away,” and arguing that his ties to Michigan’s Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed are hurting the campaign.

Dingell joined Thursday’s edition of CNN News Central, in part to talk up El-Sayed, when the network’s Brianna Keilar asked about Piker’s recent Axios interview, in which he said he believes that “pound-for-pound,” the United States is worse than the Islamist terror group al-Qaeda, using the deadly U.S. strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Iran earlier this year as an example.

Noting that while El-Sayed campaigned with the streamer during the primary, he has since ruled out doing so in the general election, Keilar pressed, “We’ve seen Piker continue to make provocative comments. Does El-Sayed need to do more to distance himself from Piker?”

“Okay. I want to say this at this point,” Dingell prefaced. “I’m so sick of talking about Hasan Piker, and I want Hasan Piker to go away!”

The Democratic congresswoman continued:

I don’t know why he had to do that [Axios] interview. Everything he said in that interview is — look, the bombing of the school in Iran was horrific. We shouldn’t be in the war in Iran. We continue to vote for it.

This election is about Abdul El-Sayed, not Hasan Piker. What [Piker] has said — I think Israel’s got a right to exist. Quite frankly, the things he has said about women are horrific. I don’t understand. I keep telling people, “Someone explain to me why he has so many followers.”

But he is not — if he wants to see Abdul El-Sayed elected, stop going on television! Abdul has got to make it clear that he does not agree with the things he has said, but I wish everybody would stop talking about Hasan Piker, and Hasan Piker would just go away so we could talk about the issues that are at stake in November.

Watch above on CNN.

Jason Cohen contributed to this report.

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