Hasan Piker is receiving backlash on Twitter today from CNN broadcasters after statements from his stream regarding the network and its anchors were clipped and shared on social media.
In a recent stream, Piker was watching political coverage of the primary election on CNN and he didn’t seem to appreciate the way Brianna Keilar was referring to American-Turkish broadcaster and Democratic congressional candidate for California, Cenk Uygur.
Expressing frustration in a statement laced with profanity, Piker called broadcasters at CNN and other major networks “cunts” before claiming that anchors are showing bias against Uygur without even knowing how to pronounce his name.
“All of these cunts, dude, on CNN and every other established outlet, none of them can even say this mother fucker’s name right dude,” he said. “If you’re going to act like they’re being racist the least you can do, you dumb shits, is say the man’s name right.”
Following his stream, that portion of the VOD was clipped and one of Keilar’s colleagues, Jake Tapper, responded on Twitter, calling it “absolutely disgusting.”
Piker’s defensiveness and frustration came largely in part due to his relation to Uygur. The political candidate is his uncle.
In terms of political connection, both Piker and Uygur are known for working with progressive Turkish social media outlet The Young Turk, which has a channel on YouTube. Uygur has served as the outlet’s president since 2002 and Piker is a host for one of its shows called “The Breakdown.”
Following Tapper’s tweet, Piker replied saying that he wasn’t referring to women specifically when using the c-word. But he also seemed to double down on his initial statement.
“I’m not referring to the women specifically when I say ‘everyone in establishment media’—I’m talking about people like you Jake,” he said. “You and everyone else who engages in dishonest smears off this one psycho’s Twitter threads just cus it targets progressives which you obviously hate.”