I never claimed he said those additional things.

What he does have is an army of apologists who will tell other why what he said isn’t what he said, and if it was what was said it’s being taken out of context, and if it’s not out of context it’s actually three different statements, two of which he never said, but could be true, so accept that even though that’s not what he said.

I know you didn’t, that’s why I accused you of being an apologist.

“America deserved X” does not mean “the children involved deserved X” and it does not even mean “the people who did X did a good thing”. It means only “America deserved X”.

It doesn’t matter how you try to separate “America” the idea as deserving 9/11 from “Americans” who didn’t deserve it because when you flatten it to “America deserved 9/11”, you’re not separating the means from the end, and the means was jets filled with innocent people turned into missiles. 9/11 isn’t 9/11 without the kids who died on the planes to give America what it deserved.

Piker’s not an idiot. He knew that a comment like that would go viral, it’s a sensationalist hot take that will immediately cause an explosion of discussion, which then becomes a quick dismissal of “it was satire”, but most importantly, he flipped being held accountable for his lack of nuance on separating America from Americans into being attacked by his enemies.

Edit: formatting error fixed