On this day in 2015, 14-year-old Texas schoolboy Ahmed Mohamed was arrested over what was assumed to be a bomb but was actually a homemade clock. Islamophobic pro-Trump groups defended the arrest but amid national outcry, Mohamed was invited to the White House by President Barack Obama.
Hi! It’s Monday and you’re stuck with me, Swin, again. Zeteo videographer Liam Mann and I got back a few days ago from Dallas, Texas, where we endured the Republican Party’s “Trump-a-palooza” midterm convention so you didn’t have to. (Read our reporting here, here, and here, and watch our coverage here, here, and here.) I’ll admit there’s one part of the miserable convention I can’t quite shake, but haven’t reported on yet: the Trump administration and GOP’s focus on a left-wing Twitch streamer and his half-naked body.
That changes now. In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we’ll get right into the now-unavoidable topic of the Trump regime’s fixation on Hasan Piker’s almost-dick-pic, and what it all means for the 2026 U.S. midterm elections. (Yes, it means something, just stay with me…) Plus, Donald Trump has thoughts about Ukraine striking Russian oil infrastructure. Ridiculous thoughts, of course, related to his increasingly damaging war on Iran. Let’s read on.
Into the Thirst Trap
The Republican Party and its propagandists have long had a difficult time being horny in a normal way. It’s unsettling how bad they are at seeming tolerably human while getting into that state. For reference, check out Fox’s coverage of pop star Sabrina Carpenter, or how that network gawks at spring breakers. Coming out of President Donald Trump’s decrepit, two-day cult symposium in Dallas last week, it was obvious the White House and Republican National Committee still haven’t learned how to be horny in ways that don’t remind me of Amy Poehler angrily lusting after an astronaut she thinks is an alien.
By now, you may have heard the news that in the Dallas arena where the president and the GOP threw their neo-Confederate party, Team Trump promoted the following Insta pic on the jumbotron, for the entire crowd of federal appointees, Republican lawmakers, Christian-right leaders, MAGA dead-enders, grandmas, grandpas, and younger conservatives to stare at:
You can read Prem’s profile of Piker here, and watch Mehdi’s sit-down with him here. The prolific streamer has taken on an increasingly activist role, trying to push the Democratic Party to the left. Convention organizers included multiple images of Piker in a “Trump-a-palooza” hype video about why Dems and the American hard-left seem so dangerous to them.
But you may ask why President Trump and the RNC thought it was a great idea to display Piker’s bulging junk and “meat pic” in the middle of a convention ostensibly designed to juice Republican turnout in a midterm election that many elite conservatives now fear will be a GOP bloodbath.