“You were given the choice between war and dishonor,” said Winston Churchill to Neville Chamberlain. “You chose dishonor, and you will have war.”

Similarly, concerning his spit-swapping relationship with Mao-loving America-hating leftist Hasan Piker, Michigan Democrat Senate candidate Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed was given the choice between candor and cowardice. He chose cowardice, and now he’ll have, well, even more cowardice.

From the earliest moments of his Senate candidacy, El-Sayed has embraced Piker, the tall, dark, and vile progeny of Turkish birth tourists. But when mainstream media journalists occasionally deigned to commit journalism by asking El-Sayed about his relationship with the Twitch-streaming Piker, the answer was always the same: “I’m not interested in having a conversation about streamers in California because they are not raising the prices of gas and groceries.”

It’s certainly true that El-Sayed isn’t interested in talking about Piker, and it’s entirely understandable. I mean, if you were running for federal office from a purplish-blue state, would you want to talk about gas prices, or about a guy who’s publicly expressed his belief that Mao Zedong, the worst butcher of the 20th century, was “a great man,” that “America deserved 9/11,” that “Zionism is fascism,” that America is “the top dog in terrorism,” and that we should “murder” the landlords and “let the streets soak in their f***ing red capitalist blood”?

Indeed, would you want to explain why you’re fist-bumping with such an anti-Western, anti-American dirtbag, and why you’re palling around with him at poolside on the day before your razor-thin victory in Michigan’s Democrat primary election?

But now El-Sayed is learning the hard way that the Fourth Estate actually has a vote in what topics get talked about. After months of cowardly and disingenuous dodges, his hand was finally forced last week by an interview of Piker by Alex Thompson of Axios. It seems that, like any narcissist, Piker’s compulsion to open his mouth and spew his leftist garbage finally overwhelmed him, and he doubled down on his earlier “top dog in terrorism” comment by saying that, yes, America is “pound for pound” worse than al-Qaeda.

“Now that he won’t stop talking,” said a disgusted old-school Democrat, Rahm Emanuel, “the folks who told us Hasan Piker is a serious voice who should be listened to ought to let us know which of these positions we’re supposed to take seriously.”

But wait. There’s more. Piker also threw his support behind a nuclear-armed Iran and the nuclear blackmail that would result. “I think that the Middle East would be more stable,” he said, if Iran had nukes.

In a statement to Axios on Wednesday, El-Sayed finally tried to put some 11th-hour daylight between himself and his bestie: “I do not agree with this statement [on al-Qaeda], nor do I give much weight to the statements made by [wait for it!] a social media streamer.”

This, folks, is a whole lotta taqiyya — which is the Shia Islam precept that allows its adherents to lie in order to gain advantage against the enemies of Islam. El-Sayed isn’t disavowing all those awful things Piker has said. If he did, even his most ardent young leftist supporters would see right through it as cowardly and opportunistic. So he’s trying to thread a needle that’ll mollify the middle while keeping his base energized.

Good luck with that.

“No, Abdul, Piker isn’t a distraction from more important questions,” wrote columnist Isaac Shorr. “He’s a stand-in for the most important one of all: Which side are you on?”

Whether your source is Aesop, or Aristotle, or Corinthians, or Cervantes, or Ben Franklin, or George Washington, the maxim bears out: We’re judged by the company we keep.

And in the weeks between now and November 3, Abdul El-Sayed will be increasingly judged by his bromance with Hasan Piker. Which is just as it should be.