Hasan Piker Says He ‘Misspoke’ When He Said, ‘America Deserved 9/11’ and Says Apologizing Shows ‘Weakness’

TRANSCRIPT:

PIKER: "The other side of this, of course, is that it shows weakness. In the post Trump universe that we live in, a lot of people actually don’t respect apologies for the most part. Everyone thinks that they respect apologies, they see it as humility, but the reality is most people don’t see it as humility, unfortunately. We live in a very contentious media environment. And the reality of the matter is, when you apologize for an affiliation, whether it’s in the past or even in the future, most people end up doubling down on that and they use that as ownership and will even turn around and yell at you for your hypocrisy, for ever having courted the interests of someone like myself at all. I'll give you one example from my own personal experience. A lot of people use the 9/11 comments that I made in 2019 as a way to declare myself to be a radical, an America-hating radical. And it’s really interesting because I misspoke on that and I actually very clearly was describing the concept of blowback in the longer context of it all, and I also apologized for it back in 2019, and yet people still use that soundbite over and over again now in 2026."