Eight days before an election, everything a politician does sends a message: where she shows up, who she sits next to, and what she lets slide.
On Monday night in Minneapolis, Rep. Ilhan Omar made her choices, and they told you a lot.
The setting was a sold-out event called “I’m The Host Now!”, the first show from state Sen. Omar Fateh, the socialist who ran for mayor of Minneapolis and lost. Sharing the stage was Hasan Piker, the Twitch streamer best known for saying America “deserved” 9/11.
Piker gave his crowd what it came for.
“I’m not even gonna bring up the Republicans because they are the most un-American force in this country,” he said. “They’re terrorists.”
🚨 HOLY CRAP! Hasan Piker appeared with Ilhan Omar Nur Said Elmi and called Republicans "terrorists"
"They started saying migrants were a national security threat…migrants are not a national security threat…they are a benefit…Republicans [are] terrorists."
Deport Hasan… pic.twitter.com/b8LtzO2Y1c
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 27, 2026
He didn’t call Republicans opponents, or wrong, or bad for the country. He called them terrorists, the same word for the men behind the attacks he once said America had earned.
Omar didn’t flinch. She added to it, calling the GOP the “pedophile protection party.”
Piker had some left over for his own side. Democrats lost their way, he argued, when they “started also saying that migrants were a national security threat.” Any Democrat who won’t come around to his view, he said, is “un-American.”
So Republicans are terrorists, and Democrats who worry about the border are disloyal. That leaves a very small room, and most of the country isn’t in it.
What makes this more than another ugly night online is that she was warned.
Fellow Minnesota Democrats urged Omar to cancel. Rep. Angie Craig called Piker “polarizing and dangerous” and said sharing a stage with him was a mistake. Nobody needed a briefing on who he is. Just last month, Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed was burned by a joint appearance with Piker and had to back away. Since then, most Democratic campaigns have kept their distance.
Omar went anyway, and she looked like she was having a good time. Backstage, she joked that the federal investigation she’s under, and the criticism Piker gets, really come down to how good-looking they both are.
You make a joke like that when you think the room belongs to you.
Her Republican opponent, John Nagel, didn’t find it funny. “This is not outreach,” he wrote. “It is the normalization of antisemitism, support for terrorists and contempt for America.” He called on Minnesota’s top Democrats to disavow the appearance.
Omar has given her answer. The open question is whether anyone in her party with more pull than Angie Craig will say out loud what so many of them said privately before Monday night.
The voters get the last word in eight days.
