Political commentator and Twitch streamer Hasan Piker has amassed a huge gay fanbase thanks to his outspoken left-wing politics and tendency to show off his well-built arms.
Today today it was the former that lead to the outspoken Piker facing backlash and resulted in Twitch issuing a temporary ban on the streamer following his incendiary comments about Republican Governor Rick Scott. During his stream on Monday Piker was reacting to statements made by House Speaker Mike Johnson to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on The Source last week, regarding his party’s proposed budget.
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“The White House has committed. The president said over and over and over, ‘We’re not going to touch Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.’ We’ve made the same commitment. Now that said, what we are going to do is go into those programs and carve out the fraud, waste, and abuse, and find efficiencies,” Speaker Johnson said.
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Piker disputed Johnson's comments in the clip explaining “That fraud is not coming from individuals it's coming from providers. They're not tackling providers. They are not actually going after false billing. They are trying to cut recipients. Ok. It is not coming at the point of recipients."
"If you cared about Medicare fraud or Medicaid fraud you would kill Rick Scott,” Piker continued. “You wouldn’t make Rick Scott, former Governor of Florida Rick Scott, you wouldn’t make him...the fucking head of the Senate Committee or something like the Republican fundraising initiatives.”
Why Scott? Because the former Governor of Florida turned Senator once oversaw one of the largest medical frauds in U.S. history, perpetrated by his company Columbia/HCA and HCA - The Healthcare Company.
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Twitch has yet to officially confirm if these comments led to Piker's ban, nor have they made it clear for how long the ban will be imposed.
Following the news of Piker’s temporary removal from the platform the streamer took to X to respond. “im sorry! ill choose my words carefully next time & say “if mike johnson cares abt medicare fraud (since he wants to cut 800m from medicaid/medicare) he’d call for MAX PUNISHMENT for current fl gop senator/former gov rick scott- who has done the most medicare fraud in us history!” he wrote.
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Later adding, “big shout out to the right wing free speech lovers who took time out of their day screaming about dei & immigrants, to cry abt this!”