Hasan Piker Hits Back at Jesse Watters Over Maid Cafe Video, Cites Rudy Giuliani

Hasan Piker, the left-wing Twitch streamer, said Wednesday that he is not embarrassed by footage of himself in a cat-eared maid outfit that Fox News host Jesse Watters aired at the top of his show. Piker argued that the attack backfires on Republicans, who have spent years casting him as a dangerous radical.

On Tuesday's Jesse Watters Primetime, Watters played the clip, which was filmed during Piker's January 2025 trip to Japan, when he and other content creators worked at a maid cafe, the Advocate reported. Watters described Piker as the streamer "leading the communist bloc through the midterms" and asked whether Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan whom Piker has backed, liked the outfit. "All I know when I was in Paris, maids didn't dress like that," Watters said.

El-Sayed leads Republican Mike Rogers 48.4 percent to 45 percent in PolitiKool's polling average for the Michigan Senate race.

Hasan Piker Says the Fox News Attack 'Backfires'

On his stream, Piker said the footage was never hidden. "This is something that I personally shot on my Twitch stream when we went to Japan. It's not something that I'm ashamed of," he said. He added that it "was presented as entertainment to 30,000 live viewers at the time," a figure he gave himself.

Piker said the segment works against the right's own portrayal of him. "I will say stuff like this backfires on these guys. And the reason why it backfires on these guys is because they have tried to present me as this dangerous, scary Islamic jihadist for the longest time," he said. "Am I scary or am I a figure that is laughable?"

Rudy Giuliani's 2000 Inner Circle Sketch With Donald Trump

Next, Piker played a clip of Rudy Giuliani. In a comedy sketch filmed in 2000 for New York's Inner Circle press dinner, an annual roast-style show, Giuliani, then the city's mayor, appeared as a female character. Donald Trump, playing himself, "full-on gropes Giuliani, who exclaims, 'Oh, you dirty boy,' and slaps the tycoon," Mother Jones reported.

"So many right wing figures themselves have participated in drag who now act as though doing drag is a bad thing," Piker said. "It's not hypocritical for the left to do this kind of thing. It's only hypocritical for the right to do this kind of thing."

The Pride.com List of Republicans Photographed in Drag

Piker then read from a Pride.com list of seven Republicans who have been photographed in drag. Along with former Reps. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina and George Santos of New York, the list names the five shown below:

Several of them rejected the comparison. Schatzline called his dress "a joke" for a theater project, and Lee called the link between his yearbook photo and the drag bill he planned to sign "a ridiculous, ridiculous question," according to NBC News. Vance's campaign did not comment on his photo, the Advocate reported.

Donald Trump's 2016 Stance on Transgender Bathrooms

Piker also argued that the party's focus on drag is recent. "Donald Trump ran a campaign that was welcoming to transgender people," he said, pointing to Trump's 2016 comments on North Carolina's bathroom bill. "That was the attitude. Not that long ago."

In an April 2016 NBC town hall, Trump criticized North Carolina's law requiring people to use bathrooms that match the sex on their birth certificates, and he said Caitlyn Jenner could use any bathroom she chose at Trump Tower, PBS NewsHour reported.

Hasan Piker: 'I Am Who I Am'

Piker ended by going back to how the right has tried to portray him. "You're supposed to present me as a scary, dangerous, radical communist, Islamic jihadist, a religious fundamentalist," he said. Instead, he argued, the maid cafe clip made him look harmless.

"It doesn't work," he said.