Democratic socialist Francesca Hong, the frontrunner in Wisconsin’s gubernatorial primary, held a rally Sunday in South Milwaukee featuring U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar and radical streamer Hasan Piker; two figures notorious for extreme anti-American remarks that Hong has repeatedly refused to fully disavow.
Hundreds of Hong’s supporters gathered at South Milwaukee High School for an event that featured speeches by all three figures, live music, and a canvass event with a little more than a week to go before the Democratic gubernatorial primary.
Piker, who previously hosted Hong on a livestream that netted her campaign over $57,000, has a documented history of inflammatory statements against the United States. In 2019, he declared on stream, “America deserved 9/11, dude. F*** it, I’m saying it,” later calling the remark only “inappropriate” while framing it as critique of American foreign policy. He has also praised “brave” jihadists who attacked U.S. troops.
Omar, who endorsed Hong earlier this year, faced national backlash in 2019 for minimizing the September 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans. Speaking to CAIR, she referred to the al-Qaeda massacre as “some people did something” while focusing on subsequent impacts to Muslim civil liberties—a phrasing widely condemned as trivializing the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Omar has defended the comments as taken out of context.
Hong has declined to break with either figure. After her joint appearance with Piker, she stated that she does not “necessarily agree with every single statement Hasan has ever made,” but insisted that candidates “need to show up in every space” and praised his platform for amplifying progressive causes.
In a recent Fox News interview, when asked if there was anything from her Piker conversation she would disavow, Hong simply replied “No.” Her campaign has similarly stood by Omar’s endorsement without distancing from the congresswoman’s past rhetoric.
Hong, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is widely expected to win the Democratic nomination on August 11. She would then face Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany in the general election this November.
