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Online influencer Hasan Piker mocked the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump during a livestream Tuesday night, even as he bailed on a panel hosted by a pro-communist nonprofit, with organizers citing safety reasons amid backlash to his rhetoric.
Piker, a self-described Marxist and popular streamer on the Twitch platform, was slated to appear as the headliner at an event hosted by the People’s Forum in Manhattan, “Columbia & Palestine: A Test of Democracy — Featuring Hasan Piker & Guests,” but he was a no-show. Instead, while the panel proceeded without him, he streamed his show live from New York City, which he called “Mamdanistan” for Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
He spent much of the six hours reading aloud articles and X posts about himself, at turns giddy, and then complaining about the “threats,” “disparagement campaigns” and “smears” he’d received for spewing rhetoric that critics say has stoked a culture of political violence.
Last year, the far-left streamer drew public scrutiny when he called for the murder of Senator Rick Scott, R-Florida, as Republicans targeted Medicaid and Medicare fraud. He said, “If you cared about Medicare fraud or Medicaid fraud, you would kill Rick Scott.”
A fellow panelist told attendees that Piker withdrew due to “the level of attacks and targeting that he has been going through from the right and the left and right,” following backlash after “the situation” with the attempted assassination on Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday.
The episode highlights intensifying scrutiny of rhetoric by leftists like Piker, following the assassination attempt, as critics point to a pattern of inflammatory comments and question the influence of online personalities during a volatile political moment. On Tuesday, writer Peter Hamby at liberal Puck News even acknowledged, “There is a rising miasma of conspiratorial thinking, dangerous fact-denying, and dehumanizing language that has taken hold on the American left.” He singled out “clout-chasers.”
Piker’s decision to skip the in-person event while simultaneously mocking the incident online highlights escalating tensions around the influence of online personalities during a volatile political moment.
While the panel unfolded at the People’s Forum without Piker, the influencer used his livestream on Twitch to mock the assassination attempt and amplify conspiracy theories that it was a fabricated operation.
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He also fawned over late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s pre-taped White House Correspondents’ Dinner roast, including a controversial dig at First Lady Melania Trump having the “glow of an expectant widow.”
Piker laughed at the joke and interjected: “That is the bar,” a play off a slang term, “bars,” popularized in hip hop culture to refer to extremely good lyrics.
He continued, smiling: “‘You have a glow like an expectant widow’ is bars. I’m afraid to report that that is actually bars.”
Right about then, about 22 minutes into the People’s Forum event and well into Piker’s separate six-hour livestream, Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian student at Columbia University who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in April 2025 before being released by an immigration judge, took the microphone and said, “First, I would answer, or I would speak to the thing that many of you are wondering, most likely, and the question is, where is Hassan Piker?” The crowd laughed.
He continued, “Oh, yeah, Hasan was supposed to be with us tonight, and we had to do a last-minute call because of the level of attacks and targeting that he has been going through from the right and the left and, specifically, since last night, with the situation in the White House, there are people who are trying to point fingers to Hasan.”
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Mahdawi continued, “As we know, this is a whole war on truth. The system is trying to silence us and to censor us from speaking up for Palestine and from sharing our truth, because the truth has its own power. And we had to debate, as a team, with the People’s Forum team, as well, whether if we should actually reschedule it or cancel it, and it wasn’t as difficult of a decision as one might imagine, because we knew our North Star, and our North Star is to be with you and to empower ourself and to continue to share our truth.”
He finished: “So while we are with you here tonight, Hassan is streaming right now and watching us.”
The crowd broke out in cheers.
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While the People’s Forum panel lamented the alleged threats against Piker and the streamer blasted Trump and the First Lady during his livestream, NYPD Community Officers were on foot outside of the venue, and multiple police cars lined W. 37th Street in Manhattan.
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Already, lawmakers on the House Ways and Means Committee and House Oversight Committee are investigating the People’s Forum, a New York City-based nonprofit, as a hub for allegedly stoking chaos and hate in the country as part of a wider malign foreign influence operation. A Fox News Digital investigation found that the nonprofit received $22.4 million from Neville Roy Singham, a Shanghai-based American tech tycoon who has promoted Chinese Communist Party propaganda.
The organization has played a visible role organizing agitators at far-left protests and demonstrations in New York City and across the country, often in coordination with a network of pro-communist nonprofits funded by Singham, including CodePink, co-founded by his wife, Jodie Evans.
Piker has faced repeated criticisms for past remarks. Following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, Piker dismissed the reports of Israelis raped by Hamas militants, saying, “It doesn’t matter if f—ing rapes happened on October 7th. Like that doesn’t change the dynamic for me even this much,” pinching his fingers together.
He later told TV host Piers Morgan in April 2024 that he supports the chant, “Globalize the intifada,” which critics say calls for violence against Jews and the state of Israel.
“I am perfectly comfortable with people chanting about the intifada,” Piker said.
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NYPD police officers have arrested hundreds of pro-intifada protesters at Columbia over the course of multiple anti-Israel demonstrations and on-campus encampments where agitators spray painted buildings, restricted walkways and occupied the Butler Library in May 2025. Lawmakers and Columbia University investigations established rampant antisemitism among protesters targeting Jewish students.
But in its promotion for the event, the Singham-funded nonprofit’s framed a narrative of the students as victims of “surveillance, suspension and institutional resistance.”
Meanwhile, as Piker mocked the assassination attempt on his livestream, a few pro-Trump supporters stood in front of the People’s Forum entry door being interviewed on phone cameras as multiple suited security guards ushered attendees safely into the event, walking past shelves packed with books by German philosopher Karl Marx, calling for a communist “revolution.”
On his livestream, Piker griped about being the victim of “Hasan Derangement Syndrome” and becoming “the poster boy of the left.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Piker but did not receive a response.
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