Melat Kiros: I'm Still With You... Just Ignore That Last Remark!

Looking like a rotating villain.

Rep. Diana Degette (D-CO) was defeated by Melat Kiros, a lawyer who was fired from her job after she wrote an essay criticizing Israel's genocide on Gaza. She turned her frustrations to activism and ran for Congress. She made the message about affordability and an end to endless wars.

Hasan Piker interviewed her on his Twitch platform and podcast. 

She said if elected to office, she will oppose Israel funding, abolish ICE, focus on Medicare for All, call for criminal charges against Israel, end the wars in the Middle East and hold President Donald J. Trump accountable.

She defeated the 15 term lawmaker in a closely watched primary. It was a huge win for democratic socialists and progressives.

She is likely to win the general. 

Melat Kiros lost her job because of pro-Palestine advocacy. She built her entire campaign around mobilizing on this issue.

And now that she’s won the Dem primary?

“My greatest concern right now is that the state of Israel is losing support across the political spectrum.” pic.twitter.com/97uswwAMrX

— Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed) August 1, 2026

I fumbled this line, plane and simple. To be clear, my foreign policy priority is ending Israel’s occupation, apartheid, and genocide in Palestine. I also reject the notion that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, and it’s important that we distinguish the two in order to combat actual… https://t.co/5OuXOZGXiW

— Melat Kiros for Congress, CO-1 (@MelatKirosCO) August 2, 2026

I was answering this specifically in relation to rising antisemitism, but I understand how it might have been heard differently.

To be clear, there is no greater concern for me than ending the occupation, apartheid, and genocide in Palestine and guaranteeing Palestinians right…

— Melat Kiros for Congress, CO-1 (@MelatKirosCO) August 1, 2026

Hoover: Since October 7th, the overwhelming majority of Israelis are all deeply concerned. In a one-state solution, what concrete institutions would protect Jews if they no longer control the government or the military and find themselves in a minority?

Kiros: “The concern is… pic.twitter.com/d0ozRDUBeM

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) August 2, 2026

"My greatest concern right now is that Isræl is losing support in the U.S.”

This was the greatest concern of Democratic Socialist congressional candidate @MelatKirosCO:

Isræl losing support in America.

Not Gaza.

Not the humanitarian catastrophe in Palestine.

Even the… https://t.co/XeDIyTQJMB pic.twitter.com/CQ0OamQ73M

— Phantom Pain (@phantompain1984) August 1, 2026

But now folks are having second thoughts already. In an appearance on former MAGA turned Never Trump agitator Margaret Hoover, Kiros showed concerned about Israel's popularity.

She called formerly pro Israel/far right agitators Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, antisemities. Owens and Carlson joined Marjorie Taylor Glenn (Greene) and Joe Kent in leaving the Republican Party.

Kiros also caught backlash from her own progressive base following an interview on PBS's Firing Line with Margaret Hoover. In the interview, she expressed a desire to keep her progressive vision from being "immediately swatted down as bigoted or antisemitism".

Far-left commentators and pro-Palestinian activists, including Al Jazeera producer Sana Saeed, immediately accused her of being too accommodating to Israel's defenders and shifting toward a pro-establishment stance.

Kiros admitted she "fumbled this line, plain and simple," a transparent move that prevented a prolonged media cycle of activists questioning her loyalty to progressive causes.

Her quick pivot reframed her TV comments not as a genuine shift toward the political center, but as a poorly phrased attempt to explain how mainstream Democrats are failing to counter right-wing rhetoric. Consequently, her core supporters viewed it as a media-training mistake rather than ideological betrayal.

Kiros brushed aside concerns about communists inside the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) faction of the Democratic Party on Friday, arguing Republicans were using the issue to blunt the socialist movement's growing influence ahead of the midterm elections.