A two-hour "interview" is more an intimidation tactic than an "interview":
Piker, recounting the incident on his Twitch live stream on Monday, said he was led to a private room at Chicago O’Hare airport and interviewed for nearly two hours about his political views.
“The goal here is to put fear into people’s hearts, to have a chilling effect on speech that, like, the government is unafraid of intimidating you,” Piker said. “Does this stop me from saying whatever the fuck I want to say? Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous. But the reason why I wanted to talk about it was to give you more insight into what the government is doing, and to speak out against this sort of stuff.”
His responses were brilliant - and I'm taking note:
Piker repeatedly described the exchange as “cordial” but said he was transparent with the officer interviewing him that he planned to speak out about his experience, which the streamer said felt anything but random and “routine”.
Assuming the officer was familiar with his online commentary, Piker said he was candid about his views, telling the agent he was “not fond” of the US president.
He said the officer was particularly focused on his criticism of Israel’s prosecution of the Gaza war, asking him: “Do you like Hamas? Like, do you support Hamas? Do you think Hamas is a resistance group?”
In response, Piker said he told the officer that he was a “pacifist” and wanted “the endless bloodshed to end”.
“I just kept repeating that over and over again,” he said, describing the line of questioning as “insane” and a violation of his first amendment rights.