Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed has scrubbed social media posts about the September 11 attacks as criticism mounts in his Michigan campaign. The tweet deletions are deemed to be his struggle to balance progressive anti-war views with the demands of a statewide general election.
The Democratic Senate candidate removed social media posts that drew criticism over his Sept. 11 comments
El-Sayed faces Republican Rep. Mike Rogers this November. So, his campaign confirmed earlier this summer that he deleted all posts older than July 2023 “to prevent any old posts from being taken out of context.” The campaign did not say when he removed the 9/11-related content.
Two deleted posts verified by CBS News had not been previously reported. Both compared the nearly 3,000 Americans killed on September 11, 2001, to the COVID-19 death toll. In one April 2020 post, El-Sayed argued that if more Americans died from COVID than on 9/11, the country should launch a decade-long “war on public health and against poverty” similar to the post-9/11 War on Terror.
A campaign spokesperson pushed back against the criticism. “Abdul has always unequivocally condemned terrorism and the September 11 attacks,” the spokesperson told the outlet. “Mike Rogers’ attempts to misrepresent Abdul’s beliefs are bad-faith lies meant to mislead Michiganders.”
Another deleted post, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, showed Abdul El-Sayed’s tweet on September 11, 2021, that he mourned the lives lost in New York but would also mourn the roughly one million lives lost in three countries during the subsequent military campaigns.
The issue appears to fit a broader pattern for El-Sayed. Throughout the race, opponents have portrayed him as outside the political mainstream on national security and foreign policy. He has repeatedly argued that critics are misrepresenting his views.
The challenge carries particular weight in Michigan, which has one of the nation’s largest Arab American and Muslim communities. Many voters there remain focused on the consequences of the post-9/11 era, including the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and surveillance programs that reportedly targeted Muslims.
