Last week, progressive Los Angeles city councilmember Nithya Raman, who is running to be the city’s next mayor, sat down for a one-hour interview with leftist streamer-slash-Chinese Communist Party–apologist Hasan Piker.
Piker has become something of a divining rod for Democrats: Senators Cory Booker and Elissa Slotkin, among others, refuse to be interviewed by him, arguing that Piker’s disparaging remarks about Orthodox Jews and his comment that “America deserved 9/11” render him beyond the pale. Others, including Rep. Ro Khanna and, presumably, Raman, insist Democrats should avoid “purity tests.”
Seated in Piker’s West Hollywood home studio, Raman and Piker discussed public housing and street trees and sanctuary cities—all of which Raman knows a great deal about and Piker seemed to find a tad boring—until they finally arrived, around minute 50, at the “elephant in the room,” as Piker put it. He meant Israel, which has become Piker’s very own purity test. “Do you agree with dozens of human-rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, that Israel has committed a genocide?” Piker asked.
Raman, who is running against Mayor Karen Bass and former reality-television star Spencer Pratt in the June 2 “jungle primary,” must have known that this was the whole point of the interview. She did what she and her team believe she has to do to convince undecided twenty- and thirtysomething über-progressives on LA’s east side to vote for her.
Lowering her voice just a bit, she replied, “I do, yes—I’ve said that.”
