To the New York Times, inflammatory leftist streamer Hasan Piker, who is close to several DSA-style Democrats, is supposedly charismatic and even sexy. Right-wing GunTuber, firearms manufacturer, and podcaster turned Republican congressional nominee Brandon Herrera? Inflammatory and “wildly offensive,” and a danger to Republican prospects in Texas.
From San Antonio, new reporter Bayliss Wagner issued a hostile profile of the gun-rights advocate: “Nazi Jokes and Vulgar Insults: The Edgy Gun Influencer Embraced by the G.O.P. -- Brandon Herrera, long an anti-establishment outsider, is trying to help the party defend a red-leaning House district in West Texas. It’s proving messy.”
Wagner even used the same out-of-context joke NewsBusters Associate Editor Nicholas Fondacaro called out Jake Tapper for back in March (of course, she left out how Herrera killed Hitler):
A self-described gun-rights absolutist and YouTuber known for his inflammatory humor, Mr. Herrera, 30, was initially opposed this year by both Mr. Johnson and President Trump as he challenged the district’s Republican incumbent, Tony Gonzales, for a second straight time. Mr. Gonzales and his allies spent millions painting Mr. Herrera as extreme, highlighting old videos in which he made wildly offensive jokes like saying that a Nazi-era submachine gun was “the original ghetto blaster” and “Hitler’s street sweeper.”
….
In an era where candidates’ online pasts are etched into the public record, Mr. Herrera’s rise is testing voters’ tolerance for comments, even those made in jest, that are beyond the pale of public acceptability.
Recently, CNN's Jake Tapper cherrypicked soundbites of Texas Republican Brandon Herrera and deceptively edited them in order to suggest the congressional nominee was a Nazi. What CNN left on the cutting room floor was the part about him hating fascism and killing Hitler. pic.twitter.com/lhZqy9Elwe
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) March 25, 2026
Such outrage is pretty rich, coming from the paper that celebrated leftist streamer Hasan Piker who regularly spouts anti-Jewish, pro-Hamas rhetoric, and claimed Israel was responsible for October 7 and that America deserved 9-11. But while the Times shrugged off Piker’s disgusting rhetoric, it found joking by Herrera extremely troubling and politically harmful:
The district leans Republican — Mr. Trump carried it by 15 percentage points in 2024 — but Democrats believe Mr. Herrera’s polarizing nature could give their nominee, Katy Padilla Stout, a chance.
….
His digital footprint continues to dog him. In the days before Mr. Johnson rallied for Mr. Herrera and held a fund-raiser for him, a video resurfaced of the YouTuber using crude, sexualized insults against a female gun-control activist in 2022.
But Mr. Herrera says that the voters he meets are far more concerned about gas and grocery costs than about his online archive.
While Hasan’s years of eliminationist rhetoric against Israelis and support for terrorism was downplayed by the Times, and weren’t portrayed as endangering the political prospects of his streaming guests, including Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Wagner politically weaponized Herrera’s comments to the benefit of Democrats:
The comments by Mr. Herrera in the latest unearthed video are graphic and, Democrats hope, the kind of thing that could keep some Republican voters home in November.
After all the umbrage against Herrera, Wagner still had time to run a little interference for his Democratic opponent.
Ms. Padilla Stout said she decided to run to stop a gun influencer from representing Uvalde.
She has staked out center-left positions on immigration and public safety, despite Speaker Johnson’s claim that she supported “open borders” and abolishing prisons….
Contrast Herrera’s hostile treatment to the deeply weird, man-crush profile of the offensive leftist streamer Hasan Piker that John Crosbie published in the Times in April 2025: “A Progressive Mind in a Body Made for the ‘Manosphere -- Hasan Piker pumps iron, likes weapons and wears pearls. His brand of masculinity has won him many fans online -- and has been a useful vehicle for his politics.”
The Piker profile contained some truly weird passages:
Mr. Piker’s success on camera, in some part, has been aided by the fact that he is, by conventional standards, a very handsome man. He is 6 feet 4 inches tall and built like a professional athlete, with a square jaw, a beard and a head of thick dark hair….Indeed, tens of thousands of viewers may watch his videos for his political views, but many also tune in for the view of Mr. Piker himself, whose social media profiles are littered with suggestive images of his muscly body in states of undress -- or “thirst traps,” as the pictures are known. Some of his fans scrape, screenshot, clip and repackage them into “fancams” that travel across the internet, glorifying Mr. Piker’s appearance and, indirectly, his beliefs.
This was as critical as Crosbie got, a distinctly underwhelming response to Piker’s disgusting rhetoric, in paragraph 27.
Mr. Piker is similarly unfiltered with his viewpoints. Some can be extreme.
A vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, Mr. Piker has been labeled anti-American by people across the political spectrum for saying the country “deserved” the Sept. 11 attacks. His recent accusations that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza and his diatribes against the Zionist movement have led many supporters of Israel, including liberals like Representative Ritchie Torres of New York, to call Mr. Piker antisemitic.
This was all less shocking than the time Hasan shocked his dog on stream.
