Special - Cuba, Economic Warfare, and the Democratic Party w/ Hasan Piker (Preview)

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Hey Prestigeheads, hope you enjoyed this episode with the SunPiker.

Just wanted to remind everyone that our new series just came out.

It's about Karl Marx and his influence on the United States, and it's called Marx Prestige.

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Thanks and enjoy the interview.

That's kind of a motivation to your soul.

That's kind of a motivation to your soul and the night.

Hello Prestigeheads and welcome to American Prestige.

I'm Danny Bessner here as always with my friend and comrade Derek Davison.

And we're very excited to welcome to the podcast today, the man who was single handedly tearing the Democratic Party apart.

Clificular.

No, I'm kidding.

It's Hassan Piker.

Hassan, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for coming, man.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

I mean, I had no idea what you guys were about until I saw you interview this.

My favorite content creator, Clificular.

And I was like, oh, I'm here.

I'm here to talk about mocking.

I know.

I assume Derek also has a lot of thoughts on this as well.

You know, my only thought is that if we ever have Clificular on the show,

people will know because I won't be here.

It's not a matter of if but when, my friends.

Yeah.

Like riding a motorcycle.

So you're choosing, you're choosing to avoid having a conversation.

You're worried he's going to mock you.

I don't want to be mocked.

Yes.

But my daughter actually knows who Clificular is.

And if he mugs me, I will never be able to live that down.

So I can't take that risk.

But getting mugs bike if Clificular is like getting struck out by Roger Clements.

It's an honor to be at the show.

All right.

I'll have to consider that.

Yeah.

All right.

Hassan, thanks for coming, man.

Really appreciate it.

I'm sure everyone listening knows who you are.

But we're going to talk about your recent trip to Cuba with a bunch of friends of the podcast.

But because this is American politics.

And if you have for some reason become the center of the Liberals collapse Liberals self-abnegation of themselves.

I wanted to talk about what do you think about this?

More important, why do you think that you as a person have become this symbol of the Democratic party's internal debate about what it's going to be in the future?

And what do you think that debate is?

Because honestly, you probably spend more time thinking about this in this world than either of us.

So what do you think is going on with the Democratic party in general?

Yeah.

I think the Democrats very quickly snap back to the whole.

We're going to eat out a marginal victory due to like the Trump administration collapsing everything all around us.

And I think this is a mentality after a couple of months of trying to identify exactly why they had lost once again the Trump.

And obviously people like myself or probably fairly aware of exactly why.

Kamala Harris lost and it's not dissimilar to Hillary Clinton.

No, it's not because they're both women and you know, Trump is is is demuring machismo or barbarity.

it's not misogyny necessarily, it's because they were both principled upholders of the institutions

broadly. At a time when the institutions are not serving Americans, right? And there was this

back and forth for a couple months after the election, they were like, we need a Joe Rogan.

We need a Joe Rogan to the left. Kamala Harris should have gone on Joe Rogan. It would have been

pivotal in the elections. And they arrived at me for some weird reason. I was very critical of

the Democrats. I got kicked out of the DNC for one of the reasons that I was maybe a little heavy

handed in my charisma of the Democrats. I was talking about how they just refused to identify

this key issue that I think was going to be a major problem for them. It was already morally

repugnant that they were not addressing Palestine at all, even though they were

conducting a genocide alongside Israel. And they just thought that they could like brushed out

under the rug and avoid talking about it or when they did talk about it, they were very insincere

and wanted to continue the death and destruction campaign. Turns out that was right. There was a

litany of different issues that I had also pointed out on immigration, moving into the most

reactionary way of communicating on immigration that I've ever heard from Democrats since like the

90s, right? Where they just straight up said the immigrants constitute a national security threat

and that the Democrats were going to be the competent party to address this national security

threat when there's like no evidence for that whatsoever. And just frankly, it was Clinton who passed

the, it's like the illegal immigrant act. It was very punitive in the late 1990s, just like it was

Clinton who deregulated media with the Telecommunications Act, sorry. Well, the reason

I brought that up is because like up until the 90s, like somewhat anti-immigrant rhetoric would come

from the Democrats quite frequently because they saw it as a labor problem, right? And obviously,

I have a separate solution for that because I think that the labor problem could be solved if there

was no lump sum, there is no lump sum of labor. If you were to, if you were to actually document

the migrant workers properly and a lot of them, the organized, they would be able to secure a

much larger piece of the productive output alongside the rest of the American working class.

There would still be somewhat of a depressive force on wages, but it's negligible in comparison to

what the situation looks like right now with this two-tier system. Anyway, I'm diving way too deep

into all this stuff. But details are good. The point I was trying to make is that there's all

these issues with the Democratic Party and the way that they represent themselves, right? And

and for a little bit, I thought maybe they will take a good, long hard look at themselves.

Obviously, they were the likes of Seth Maltini and others who immediately came out and were like,

we're two pro-trains. We got to go right-wing on a lot of this culture worth stuff. That's how

we're going to win back the mythical moderate voter. We didn't pivot right hard enough, right?

That was ridiculous. That was utterly ridiculous. And then the special election started popping up.

And then these primary started popping up. And now we're in the midterms, right? And we started

seeing the populous left Bernie Krat-wing of the Democratic Party making some significant gains.

And I noticed that even regular lifelong Democrats, you know, the barbers and the devils,

I like to call them, you know, the wine moms and, you know, the educated, the college-educated

white liberals that live in the suburbs were also starting to arrive at our conclusions about

the Democratic Party's effect with nature. It's ineptitude. It's position is basically a

controlled opposition party because they were very frustrated with the like-so-hikim Jeffries,

Chuck Schumer and the like. And the national party, not doing enough to combat growing fascism in

this country, who's terrifying a lot of, you know, kindhearted individuals, self-identifying liberals.

And that's reflected in the polls right now. The Democrats are unprecedentedly unpopular at

a time when Trump is also incredibly unpopular. And that's not supposed to happen. It's supposed to

have a, you know, a reverse effect where the Democrats, by design, by virtue of not being the

horribly unpopular party in charge is supposed to see a significant boost in the polls. They

haven't gotten that. That's because they are, they're leaning into the anger and resentment that

people feel and they're trying to very clearly win on the virtue of harm reduction, right? Simply

because they're the only other option out there. But on top of that, given that there are now

actual opportunities to primary these establishment liberals, centrist right wing,

neoliberal Democrats, the party, I think, is in a state of panic. They see this growth,

this left flank alternative, as I like to call it, inside of their own ranks, and they're not

exactly fond of that, right? Zoram Amdani was a perfect example of this. This became not just a

national story, but an international one, where, where all of a sudden, you got a guy who's like,

I'm a socialist, I'm brown, I'm an anti-zionist, I'm not going to Israel, right? Like he's touching

the third rail, he's charismatic, he's, he smiles a lot, and, and he has, he's running a very effective

campaign in exactly the ways that, that I have been begging Democrats to run campaigns on, you know,

just hitting five identifiable policies that are immediately going to have a positive impact on

the working class in New York City. And he wins, he wins, he wins the crowd at primary field,

and then all of a sudden, the forces of the Democratic Party come down on him, like the wrath of God,

all these establishment liberals are refusing to endorse them. They, you know, they, they subtly,

and sometimes not so subtly, push Andrew Cuomo, this reviled figure in New York politics is

incredibly right wing figure, right? And, and Zoram Amdani defeats them all the same.

And, and now that he has actually achieved some, some pretty significant results, as a mayor,

and his popularity has only grown because he's delivering the goods, the, the, the Democrats are

fearful that the base is going to look at that and go, well, we want more of this. Like, why can't

you be like Zoram, right? Well, I can't, you also deliver an affordability agenda that will

improve my day-to-day, right? And, and, and that's something that the Democrats are very fearful of,

because they're still obviously beholden of the same corporate benefactors that the Republicans

are beholden to. And therefore, if they were to institute any anti-capitalist policy, like,

this is not even, I don't mean that in like a seizing the means of production kind of way,

I just mean like, striking profit centers in a meaningful way, like, undermining profit

margins in a meaningful way in order to, to improve the everyday existence, material conditions

of, like, working class Americans, right? If they were to do that, then they would shut off

major money faucets that have kept these, these institutionalists, the establishment Democrats

in their seats of power in perpetuity, and they don't want that. They want to keep running

from a place of powerlessness and to, to try to maintain some kind of like moral superiority over

the reactionary right, and, and, you know, win marginal victories over and over again and not

really produce any positive results for their, for their electorate, for the people that voted for

them. And people like Zora on and all these other, like, left-flank candidates actually are,

are now creating a real unique problem for those people who want that, for the established

Democrats who want to, you know, not do things. And, and that's the reason why they've identified

someone like myself, or perhaps foolishly, as like, one of the points of entry into that

conversation, like, to, to attack someone like myself and take me down a couple pegs to ensure

that I don't actually, you know, have a line of communication, direct line of communication with

these politicians that are running, so that they can undermine that message, that they can

undermine the, the Bernie Crattage and the left populism of, of that variety. They just don't want

another Zora on, is what I'm trying to explain. And they're worried that they're going to have, like,

10 or 15 other Zorons around the country, and that's going to create caucus. That's going to make

things a lot harder, because even a minority of like 15 to 20 people, if they're actually ideologically

committed, they could genuinely make some legislative changes, right? Like they could actually

refuse to, refuse to abide by whatever the Democratic agenda is and make a big fuss.

And especially if they're charismatic and beloved, then, you know, their constituents will also do

the same. So that's, that's what they're afraid of. And they've foolishly decided to attack me

instead. And doubly foolishly, they decided to attack me on the issue of Israel, which is unbelievably

pop, unbelievably unpopular in the base. But, you know, these, these boomers that are on television,

in the media, in the political class, still have this idiotic notion that, you know, Israel is

this untouchable third rail as though it's still like 2016 or something, when that's not the case.

The, the timing, I think, is, is interesting. And I would note that we're interviewing you a couple

of days, I guess, maybe a day after CNN and its flagship program at a time when there's like a

major war going on in the Middle East and war is going on in Afghanistan and Sudan and,

you know, crises all over the world decided to devote a whole segment to you and your

corrosive effect on the Democratic Party, you know, really, really focusing on the key, the core

issues of the day. It does feel though like it's a convenient opportunity for Democrats who don't

want to talk about Israel, who don't want to really talk about what Israel is doing in the world,

don't really want to talk about the war because ultimately they agree with the war. They don't have

any substantive disagreement with what Trump is doing. They disagree with how it's being done.

And they don't want to talk about that because they know it's not popular. So instead they can

reframe the conversation, anything having to do with Israel or the Middle East around this person

who is, you know, talking to Democratic candidates and is, you know, we're going to call them

anti-Sema, you know, anti-Semitic, even though not really anti-Zionist, but we're going to call

them anti-Semitic and try to reframe things around that. It does feel like there's a certain

level of convenience there for them in the timing. Yeah. I think there's also something really

funny about this, but it totally undercuts the idea that...