NEW ARRIVALS: The furious streamer came fighting back!

FRIDAY, AUGUST 14, 2026

We won't repost what he said: Judged by any normal standard, last week's "new arrival on the front" is no one's idea of a joke.   

That new arrival was Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Party's Senate nominee in Michigan. There's a lot to look at, so here we go. Fellow citizens, just try to hang on:  

Abdul El-Sayed 

Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed (born October 31, 1984), known as Abdul El-Sayed, is an American politician and epidemiologist who is the Democratic nominee in the 2026 United States Senate election in Michigan.

A progressive Democrat, El-Sayed supports regulated capitalism, Medicare for All, ceasing US military funding to Israel, and abolishing ICE. He ran for governor in 2018, placing second to Gretchen Whitmer in the Democratic primary.

He served as the director of the Department of Health, Human, and Veterans Services of Wayne County from 2023 to 2025. From 2015 to 2017, he was the executive director of the City of Detroit Health Department, where he oversaw public health initiatives during the city’s recovery from bankruptcy. A graduate of the University of Michigan and a Rhodes Scholar at Oriel College, Oxford, El-Sayed holds a Doctor of Medicine from Columbia University, where he was an assistant professor of epidemiology.

That's where the leading authority starts. Continuing, that source also tells us this:  

El-Sayed was born in the Detroit suburb of Rochester Hills to Egyptian immigrant parents. His father, Mohamed, was raised in Alexandria, Egypt, and immigrated to the U.S. to pursue a PhD at Wayne State University. His mother, Fatten Elkomy, is a nurse practitioner in Missouri. Abdul was raised in the Detroit area by his father and stepmother Jacqueline (a native of Gratiot County, Michigan), both of whom are engineers.

El-Sayed graduated from Bloomfield Hills Andover High School, where he was a team captain for wrestling, football and lacrosse in 2003. He then attended the University of Michigan, where he majored in biology and political science...He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with Highest Distinction in 2007 with a bachelor's degree and delivered that year's commencement speech.  

[...]   

As a second-year medical student, he received a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Oriel College, Oxford, where he completed a D.Phil. in public health in 2011. In 2014, he completed a Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons...El-Sayed did not pursue a medical license and instead went into public health epidemiology work.

There once was a time when a resume of that type might inspire grudging respect. In the madness of the present day, El-Sayed's win last week produced ugly pushback from President Trump, along with a flurry of commentary on the Fox News Channel in which the children complained that he refers to himself as a "physician" when he should really just say he's a "doctor."   

(No, we aren't making that up.)

Will Candidate El-Sayed win November's general election? We have no idea. 

He delivered a prickly response to the president's ugly insults. Assuming he wants to win in November, that struck us as possibly the wrong way to go, though of course there's no way to be certain. 

And then there's the fact he has campaigned with Hasan Piker, another of this year's "new arrivals." The nominee has even suggested that he might do so again. 

Would that tilt the vote more Red or more Blue? Would it change any votes at all?

We can't actually tell you that! We can say that Piker arrives on the front with a rather high profile, in part for reasons the leading authority summarizes here:   

Hasan Piker   

Hasan Doğan Piker (born July 25, 1991) is an American Twitch streamer, influencer, and left-wing political commentator. His livestreams usually include discussions on current affairs and lifestyle stories, playing video games, reacting to memes and media clips, and interacting with his viewers.

As of 2026, Piker's Twitch channel ranks among the platform's most-subscribed. Piker has been called one of the biggest voices on the American Left...He has regularly spoken about the Gaza war, advocating for Palestinians and criticizing the Israeli government. 

[...] 

In May 2024, Piker described allegations of Hamas carrying out sexual violence during the October 7 attacks as "rape fantasies" and "rape hallucinations." Piker has also said, "It doesn't matter if rape happened on October 7th. It doesn't change the dynamic for me." 

In an April 2026 interview with The New Republic, Piker said of the quotation: "I think it's very clear what I was saying. I was debating someone at the time about there being sexual violence that occurred on October 7th. And I said sexual violence does take place in situations like this, and there was definitely testimony of sexual violence that had taken place amongst the hostages. But that doesn't change the dynamic of Israel committing a genocide against the Palestinians, and my opposing that genocide."

And so on from there, at substantial length, as you can see for yourself. Now for the rest of the story:

This Monday, Joe Scarborough voiced concern about the possibility that Democrats might be snatching election defeat from the jaws of victory at the present time. At Mediaite, David Gilmour presented a lengthy account of Scarborough's "fiery, must-watch rant." 

Gilmour presented transcript and tape of the "fiery rant." You can just click here. 

At that time, it still seemed likely that new arrival Francesca Hong was going to win in Wisconsin. In Scarborough's view, mainstream Democrats were failing to separate themselves from the less presentable views of such DSA / lefty types. 

As we showed you yesterday, Scarborough eventually said what you see below. Though he never said his name, he was plainly referring to Piker in this part of his fiery plea:

SCARBOROUGH (8/10/26): There's nothing wrong with the Democrats supporting economic justice. There's nothing wrong with the Democrats supporting...getting rid of the Trump taxes and making billionaires pay more in taxes. 

That’s a legitimate mainstream debate for people to have. "Healthcare for all! Healthcare is unaffordable!" That is something most Americans would agree with. 

But please, I don’t need people telling me, "Oh, you have to just turn a blind eye to people saying that women getting raped on October 7 didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things." No, Americans aren’t going to support that!   

Plainly, he was referring to Piker's famous statement about October 7. Later that day, Piker came pushing back, going on and on, at endless length, in a way we won't repost or transcribe.   

You can read what Piker said by clicking for Gilmour's follow-up report. Also, you can listen to what Piker said by clicking that link. 

(In our view, a fair amount of what Piker said that day was inaccurate.)

According to the leading authority, Piker seems to have become relatively wealthy providing content of that general type. "In 2021, he bought a $2.7 million house in West Hollywood," the leading authority says.

People also get wealthy on the Fox News Channel! But can the American project, such as it has been, really expect to survive a discourse of this type?   

The so-called "democratization of media" has created a new way of life. With apologies to Huey Long, our nation now runs on this rocket fuel:   

Every streamer a king!

To borrow from the early Dylan, in one of his most painful songs:   

But oh, what kind of democratization is this, which goes from bad to worse?

More on the composition: Yes, the song is called Tears of Rage. In the present day, our culture is running on the rage, perhaps in the absence of tears.

For the full lyrics, click here. 

THURSDAY: Pharaoh's name to be restored...

THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 2026

...to the walls of The Whathisname Center: Kurt Andersen's essay appears today in print editions of the New York Times. 

As we've noted, it starts with an ominous-sounding, fairly recent observation from the late Rush Limbaugh:

Has America Already Undergone a Soft Breakup?

“I actually think,” Rush Limbaugh told his many millions of listeners during the weeks between Donald Trump losing the 2020 election and his supporters’ assault on the Capitol, “that we’re trending toward secession. It can’t go on this way. There cannot be a peaceful coexistence of two completely different theories of life, theories of government, theories of how we manage our affairs.” 

It can't go on this way? Given this struggling nation's "two different theories of [everything]," we're trending toward secession? 

We can't say that Limbaugh's basic perception was wrong. 

In the past, we ourselves have spoken of a "silent secession" by elements within the Red States. As Andersen's essay continues, he talks about a "soft secession" being practiced by attorney generals of the Blue States—and that phrase is being employed by those Blue State officials themselves, to describe their own activities!   

As he continues, Andersen comes up with some somewhat silly-sounding ways to deal with the fact that we've become two different epistemic entities. Here's one example:

We can’t keep going this way. Escaping federal dysfunction and avoiding real hostilities over the long term will require some kind of radical shift. Perhaps states and regions could become much more independent. Like the regional autonomous communities in Spain, some of which collect nearly all the taxes their inhabitants pay and then forward a negotiated share to the national government. Or the cantons of Switzerland, which can divide or reconfigure, and each one decides whether newcomers become Swiss citizens.   

As Andersen starts, he's agreeing with Limbaugh there:  

We can’t keep going this way, he says. We need to come together long enough to agree to be more like Spain, or perhaps to let ourselves function more like the shapeshifting cantons of Switzerland.   

Could some such radical shift occur? It seems a bit hard to believe, but in theory, everything's possible. 

("Isn't it pretty to think so?" That's what Hemingway famously wrote, concerning something completely different, at the end of The Sun Also Rises. Recalling President Obama's claim that we're really just the United States, Andersen has borrowed the famous line just one paragraph earlier!)

Can the United States be more like Spain? It's hard to answer that question, but we thought of Limbaugh's "two different theories of [everything]" when we perused this bit of breaking warfare online at the New York Times:   

Kennedy Center Board Decides to Inscribe Trump’s Name on Building   

The board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts voted on Thursday to inscribe President Trump’s name on the building beneath the main signage, aggressively testing a federal judge’s order to remove it, according to two people with direct knowledge of the proceedings.

According to the resolution approved by the Trump-allied board, the inscription underneath the institution’s name would read: “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.” The board’s decision came shortly after it voted to move forward with Mr. Trump’s plan to shutter the building for renovations.

The president’s name was added to the building last year, but the judge ordered the letters taken down, finding that only Congress had the authority to change the institution’s name. The center removed Mr. Trump’s name in June but is appealing the ruling.

In Thursday’s resolution, the board directed officials to undertake “all legal means” to honor Mr. Trump for bringing the center back “from the brink of disaster.”  

Are the AGs of Blue America engaged in some sort of "soft secession?" We aren't sure, but potent elements of Red America are looking for ways to pick fights about attributions and intimations of greatness in every conceivable sphere.

Andersen's soft headline notwithstanding, this never-ending attack on the priors—this ongoing attempted "reinvention [of everything]"—is well underway at this time. 

Potent chunks of Red America are trying to make their pharaoh live forever. Warning:

Over here, in Blue America, we may have our foibles too.

NEW ARRIVALS: Hong came and went as a new arrival!

THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 2026

Hasan Piker remains: Based on her lead in the polls, the new arrival on the front was supposed to be Francesca Hong.  It was thought that she would be the Democratic Party's nominee for governor of Wisconsin. 

In this passage from a profile in The Atlantic, Helen Lewis starts to explain why that didn't happen. Dual headline included:

AOC Knows a Lemon When She Sees One   
Francesca Hong’s surprise loss in Wisconsin is a blessing to the Democratic Party.

[...]  

Hong’s loss yesterday was unexpected. Two weeks ago, the 37-year-old state legislator was the front-runner in the polls, largely because the Democratic primary had turned into a clown show... [O]ne poll had Hong 22 points ahead. In the interim, another candidate, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, had returned to the race after previously withdrawing because of a lack of momentum. All the hopes of the Democratic establishment rested on Crowley’s Hail Mary pass.

Why were they so scared of Hong? Partially because she is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, an organization that calls for public ownership of large corporations, looser immigration laws, and the abolition of prisons. Hong has said that she does not agree with all of the DSA platform, but she entered the contest with an unscrubbed Twitter account, full of the most voter-repelling, peak-2020 statements you can imagine. 

At this site, we wouldn't be inclined to refer to Hong as a "lemon." On Election Day, we saw videotape of her taking questions from reporters, then walking away holding hands with her 10-year-old son.   

Years from now, that child may be lucky enough to feel that he was raised by the world's best mother. But his mother was deeply challenged as a candidate under prevailing rules of the game, according to which you run for office in order to serve, and to be allowed to serve you have to win a plurality of votes in a full-scale November election.   

Judged by any reasonable calculus, Hong was a shaky bet to win in November. As her profile ends, Lewis explains why David Crowley's surprising win this Tuesday was seen, by establishment pols, as "a blessing to the Democratic Party:"    

Crowley squeaked past Hong at the last minute. That is a nightmare for the Republicans, whose candidate Tom Tiffany was the only serious contender for the party’s nomination. In Congress, he is a member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus and voted against certifying Joe Biden’s victory in 2020. He has been heartily endorsed by Donald Trump—great for the primary, but worse than useless in the general.

Tiffany very obviously wanted to run against Hong, whom he could have painted as a dangerous radical who loves illegal immigration and hates cranberry sauce... 

The final winner, however, is democracy itself. Who would bet against Donald Trump calling up swing-state officials in 2028 and asking them to find a few more votes for the Republican candidate for president? After all, that’s exactly what he did in Georgia in 2020. Joe Biden won Wisconsin by just 21,000 votes that year, while Trump took it back by only 30,000 in the next race. For a decade, Trump and his allies have counted on Democrats to sound so out of step with mainstream voters on cultural issues that even his most authoritarian moves look tolerable by comparison. The Badger State is one of the most crucial places on the electoral map. Francesca Hong’s unexpected loss is America’s gain.  

We live in a time of madness and rage (and in a time of mental illness). Who will end up in Wisconsin's state house? Given the madness of the time, a great deal may turn on that question.  

Or then again, possibly not! Those of us in Blue America have shown the ability to find ways to occasion our own defeats. The current president squeaked into the White House for his current term in part because of the conduct in which we Blues engaged along the way, the earlier Hong included.

Among other self-inflicted disasters, the Biden administration's open border and our less digestible "Woke One" claims were able to drive a certain number of voters away from Candidate Harris. Enough voters were driven away so that someone as unpopular as Candidate Trump was able to make his way back to what's now left of the White House.

And now, along comes the latest new arrival, one who sounded off at the start of this very week. Rightly or wrongly, Republican strategists love this arrival. The leading authority starts its profile as shown:   

Hasan Piker   

Hasan Doğan Piker (born July 25, 1991) is an American Twitch streamer, influencer, and left-wing political commentator. His livestreams usually include discussions on current affairs and lifestyle stories, playing video games, reacting to memes and media clips, and interacting with his viewers.

As of 2026, Piker's Twitch channel ranks among the platform's most-subscribed. Piker has been called one of the biggest voices on the American Left. He began streaming on Twitch in March 2018, while working at The Young Turks (TYT). In January 2020, Piker left TYT to focus on his career as a Twitch streamer. He has regularly spoken about the Gaza war, advocating for Palestinians and criticizing the Israeli government. 

Piker was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, to Turkish parents. He grew up in Istanbul and was raised as a Muslim...His father, Mehmet Behçet Piker, is a political scientist and economist who was a board member and vice president of the Turkish financial conglomerate Sabancı Holding and is a founding member of Turkey's conservative Future Party. His mother, Ülker Sedef Piker (née Uygur), is an art and architectural historian who teaches at the New Jersey Institute of Technology...

Piker returned to the United States and attended the University of Miami, then transferred to Rutgers University, where he joined the Theta Delta Chi fraternity. In 2013, he graduated cum laude from Rutgers with a double major in political science and communication studies.

And so on from there. We'll start by stating the obvious:   

There's a great deal a person might criticize about the current Israeli government—about its conduct of "the Gaza war," about its excruciating behavior in the West Bank. 

There's a great deal a person might say about the ongoing plight of that region's Palestinians.

It seems to us that major American news orgs tend to shy away from coverage of the conduct in question. That said, we aren't specialists on such matters—and opinions, which are often ardently held, will differ on such matters among citizens of this country.

That said, Piker has become a favorite of the Fox News Channel because of some of the ways he has expressed his views and opinions. Correctly or otherwise, that channel sees him as someone whose aggressive rhetoric will tend to affect votes in a way which tilts more Red than Blue.

Joe Scarborough seems to hold a similar view. On Monday, he criticized the mainstream Democratic Party for failing to disassociate itself from vote-killing rhetoric of the farther left. Without ever naming Piker, he seemed to refer to something Piker once said when he offered this:   

SCARBOROUGH (8/10/26): There's nothing wrong with the Democrats supporting economic justice. There's nothing wrong with the Democrats supporting...getting rid of the Trump taxes and making billionaires pay more in taxes. 

That’s a legitimate mainstream debate for people to have. "Healthcare for all! Healthcare is unaffordable!" That is something most Americans would agree with.

But please, I don’t need people telling me, "Oh, you have to just turn a blind eye to people saying that women getting raped on October 7 didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things." No, Americans aren’t going to support that!

Women getting raped on October 7 don’t matter in the grand scheme of things? 

Almost surely, that was a reference to something Piker once said. Later, he created a case to justify, defend or explain what he had said. 

Without ever saying his name, Scarborough had presumably been referring to Piker. On Monday, the streamer responded at length.

Tomorrow, we'll show you what Piker said. He's an important new arrival. For citizens of Blue America, there's a great to think about here.

Tomorrow: Piker's arrival

BREAKING: Trip off campus to take place!

THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 2026

We'll be posting maybe by noon: We're off on a rare trip to, where else, the medical mission. 

We expect to be posting by noon. Today's subject:

New arrival Hasan Piker!

WEDNESDAY: Discussion is "tempered," Levin says!

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 12, 2026

We agree with him all the way down: We agree with TMZ's Harvey Levin. One part of this story has, in fact, been strangely "tempered"—or at least, so it seems.  

Levin was referring to the president's flight from Air Force One on his way out of Turkey. So let us just link you to this:

TMZ’s Harvey Levin Questions Why Threatened Air Force One Was Allowed to Take Off with ‘Unsuspecting’ Reporters and Staff Aboard  

Security threats which prompted President Donald Trump to secretly ditch Air Force One after the July NATO Summit were “astonishing enough,” but TMZ’s Harvey Levin wants to know why the plane was allowed to fly at all with “unsuspecting” reporters and White House staffers aboard.

TMZ’s Harvey Levin wants to know why the plane was allowed to fly at all with “unsuspecting” reporters and White House staffers aboard

Levin took to X to raise the question of why so many people were apparently put in harm’s way while Trump was reportedly snuck out via a catering truck to a waiting military aircraft.

“It’s scary that there was this kind of a threat,” Levin said in the video posted to the social media platform before adding, “but one of the elements of this incredible story has kind of been tempered for some reason. … I’m not sure at all why it’s been tempered.” 

And so on from there. 

When Levin says that one part of the story has been "tempered," he means it's odd that major journalists aren't discussing the extremely peculiar ethics which seem to be involved in this strange event.  

NEW ARRIVALS: Press and staff stayed on the plane...

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 12, 2026  

...after the president left: Crouched behind barrels of chicken salad, he made his way out of Turkey!

It was the Washington Post which broke the story. The Post's report starts like this: 

Contradicting public statements, Trump took secret flight from Turkey amid Iranian threat

An Iranian assassination threat against President Donald Trump prompted an extraordinary operation last month in which he flew secretly from Turkey on an alternate military aircraft while the White House said he was aboard Air Force One, The Washington Post has learned.

The clandestine mission, which has not been reported previously, was carried out unbeknownst to journalists and some White House staff members who believed they were on the same plane as the president, according to material reviewed by The Post, a U.S. official familiar with the operation and another person with knowledge of the president’s travel. These people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the matter.  

[...]   

In Ankara, Trump boarded the old Air Force One jumbo jet in view of television cameras. He was secretly shuttled minutes later to a smaller plane—an Air Force C-32A—via an airport catering truck typically used to load meals and other supplies preflight, according to the U.S. official and corroborating material reviewed by The Post. That made Air Force One a “decoy” with media and some White House staff aboard, the official said.   

The catering truck took the sitting president to the smaller C-32A. Flying out of Turkey on Air Force One was deemed too dangerous for the president, though media and some White House staff were left aboard the doomed plane.   

We were puzzled by the ethics of this procedure. Last night, someone finally asked about that, as Mediaite reports:  

REPORTER (8/11/26): Why was it too dangerous for you to fly on Air Force One, but not too dangerous for the press?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I don’t know. I think, actually, the plane that I flew on was at greater risk. I think it was at greater risk.

REPORTER: Why do you say that? 

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Because that would be the plane, I think, that they would be more likely to go for.  

You're right! The reporter asked a good question, but she got a ridiculous answer. 

(To see C-Span's unedited tape of the full exchange, you can just click this.)

At first glance, the arrangement here was quite strange. It was decided that the president couldn't leave on Air Force One due to the possibility that the plane would be attacked. But the press was allowed to leave on that plane—and no, they apparently weren't informed that they were presumably in danger.   

We were surprised to think that some such arrangement had actually taken place. We've also been surprised by the way cable discussions have tended to skip right past this apparent moral dilemma.  

Those were our initial reactions to this unusual event. But when we read the Post's report, we ran headfirst into this:   

To transport the president out of Turkey, U.S. officials relied in part on a technique that has occasionally become public knowledge. One such mission occurred in March 2000, when President Bill Clinton visited Pakistan. With television cameras recording in Islamabad, Clinton disembarked from a plain white jet that followed the blue-and-white Air Force One, clarifying where he had been.

There have been other times in the last 30 years when Air Force One served as a decoy for the president because of a serious threat or because he was flying to a dangerous location, another U.S. official said, declining to elaborate. [Air Force One] is highly secure, but also highly visible, so putting the president on an alternate plane instead can be considered safer, that former official said.   

"Considerably safer" for him, but not for the staff and the press!

Rather plainly, that passage seems to suggest that this sort of thing has been done in the past. Does that perhaps explain the silence of the journalists? 

Is it possible that news orgs have agreed to have their employees exposed to danger in this way? Is it possible that they don't want their employees to talk about this ongoing arrangement? 

Whatever the truth may turn out to be, the madness of the age is all around us today. We don't know of any reason to assume that a modern nation can survive this degree of tribal madness—the tribal madness referred to at the start of Kurt Andersen's guest essay for the New York Times:

Has America Already Undergone a Soft Breakup?

“I actually think,” Rush Limbaugh told his many millions of listeners during the weeks between Donald Trump losing the 2020 election and his supporters’ assault on the Capitol, “that we’re trending toward secession. It can’t go on this way. There cannot be a peaceful coexistence of two completely different theories of life, theories of government, theories of how we manage our affairs.”    

Twenty months later, on the day the F.B.I. seized thousands of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, The Times reported that “posts on Twitter that mentioned ‘civil war’ had soared nearly 3,000 percent in just a few hours" and “jumped again a few weeks later...

As we noted in Monday's report, that's the way the essay starts. We think it gets a bit unrealistic from there.

In our view, Madness Red is everywhere, as we've endlessly noted. And as we'll note tomorrow, we're also dealing with the rising tide of something which could even be seen as Madness-Adjacent Blue. 

Can things really "go on this way?" We can't say the answer is obvious. At any rate, for today, we'll leave you with these stone-cold basic questions:

While the president fled on the C-32, were journalists and White House staff subjected to significant danger?

Will news orgs choose to explore the question that one reporter asked?   

Also, was this troubling procedure a "new arrival?" Or has it been here all along? 

Tomorrow: Who is [NAME WITHHELD]?