Slotkin responds to Hasan Piker criticism over Bill Maher appearance
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Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., fired back after far-left broadcaster Hasan Piker criticized her for appearing on Bill Maher’s show but not his Twitch livestream.
“I’ve said many times that I need to call for balls and strikes, whether it’s anti-Semitism or Islamophobia… so that’s what I tried to do when I came to Michigan,” Slotkin said. He told POLITICO’s Adam Wren:.
“There are a lot of invitations that I did not accept, and every politician has to make his own choice…” he added.
Wren pressed Slotkin about what “strikes” Piker had made against him, prompting him to call out his “derogatory” remarks against Orthodox Jews and his earlier claim that America “deserved 9/11.”
FOX NEWS ‘ANTISEMITISM EXPOSED’ BULLETIN: WHO IS HASAN PİKER AND WHY CAN’T DEMOCRATS CONDEMN HIM?
Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., left, is seen during votes at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025; Hasan Piker speaks on stage during Politicon 2018 at the Los Angeles Convention Center on October 20, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images; Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for Politicon)
“Needless to say, he calls me ‘stupid’ every other week,” he said.
“Well, what normal person chooses to go on a show every ten days when someone calls you ‘stupid’?”
“That’s not going to be something I do.”
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Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed poses for a portrait on Saturday, February 21, 2026, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. (Evan Cobb/Washington Post)
Slotkin also said he “was never invited” to appear in Piker’s content.
Slotkin also came under criticism from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for his appearance on “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
The organization demanded that he apologize and condemn Maher’s “long history of anti-Muslim bigotry and anti-Arab racism.”
The Michigan Democrat’s remarks came after Piker’s controversial rally with Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed at Michigan State University on Tuesday; talking to a POLITICO reporter here, Piker described him as “[doesn’t] I know who I am.”
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Publisher and creator Hasan Piker attends a press conference on the third day of Web Summit Qatar 2026 at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Center in Doha, Qatar, on February 3, 2026. (Noushad Thekkayil/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“So there is this double standard in American politics. Islamophobia Most of the time it is not taken into consideration at all. Bill Maher is not only an Islamophobe, but he has demonstrated anti-Blackness at every turn, but at the end of the day he is a representative of the same political forces that are aligned with the goals of the establishment in this country, and so there is never any question about participating in his demonstration,” Piker said.
“America deserved 9/11,” Piker said in 2019.
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Fox News Digital reached out to Piker for comment but did not hear back.
Fox News’ Rachel Wolf contributed to this report.
