Socialists are taking over the Democrat Party. It’s no surprise they can’t tell the truth.
And now a DSA firebrand got caught in a total lie he can’t escape from.
Voters deserve straight answers from the people who ask to represent them in the United States Senate. That is why one short exchange on NBC’s Meet the Press is now drawing so much attention in Michigan. Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed was asked directly about his family’s alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and his answer was one word long.
Host Kristen Welker pressed El-Sayed on whether he could “set the record straight” on allegations that his family had connections to the controversial Islamist group. “No,” he replied. Welker followed up to make sure she understood: “No, you don’t have any ties, and your family doesn’t?” El-Sayed repeated, “No,” before suggesting that his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, was floating Islamophobic attacks against him and his family.
That response would end the matter if the public record agreed with it. According to reporting first published by the Washington Free Beacon and followed up by Fox News, it does not entirely line up. The candidate’s half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, a professor at the University of Chicago, has written publicly about the family’s history with the group.
In a 2012 post on X, Abdelhadi wrote, “Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college #respect.” In another 2012 post, she wrote, “My family has long been MB, but I’ve always felt that it has navigated the political sphere poorly/destructively.” And in a 2013 post, she wrote, “Praying for all my family that supports the #MB in #Egypt. Lie low, stay safe.”
Context matters, and it should be kept in view. The posts concern El-Sayed’s mother, Fatten Elkomy, and the family’s wider circle, and the activism described took place in the early 1970s while she was a college student. She attended Egypt’s Alexandria University, which, according to a Brookings Institution report, saw strong Muslim Brotherhood activity at that time. Nothing in the posts says that Abdul El-Sayed himself belonged to the organization.
That distinction is exactly why the question deserved a careful answer rather than a single syllable. Welker asked about his family as well as about him. A candidate who is being asked whether his family has ties to a group, and who has a half-sister on the public record describing his mother’s membership decades ago, has several honest options: acknowledge the history, explain that a parent’s college activism does not define him, and make clear where he stands on the group today. A flat “no” is the one option that critics can easily test against the record.
His campaign has responded with anger rather than detail. A spokesperson told Fox News, “Abdul is a dad and a doctor. He has spent his entire career working to keep Michiganders healthy and safe. Independent fact checkers have repeatedly debunked Mike’s lies, but their campaign continues to use bad faith attacks on Abdul’s faith and family. Mike wants to distract from Trump’s agenda that is terrorizing Michigan families at the pump and at the grocery store.” The campaign has also said the Muslim Brotherhood accusations have been “debunked as racist and untrue.”
There is a fair point buried in that defense, and it deserves acknowledgment. No American should be judged by a relative’s religion or ancestry, and attacking someone’s faith is out of bounds. Voters of every background are entitled to run for office without having their families treated as suspects. If the criticism of El-Sayed is ever based on his religion rather than on his words and record, it deserves to be rejected.
But the objection cuts both ways. Questioning a candidate about a documented fact is not Islamophobia. The fact in question here is a statement by his own sister, in her own words, about their own mother. A campaign that responds to a reasonable factual question by invoking racism instead of answering it invites the suspicion that it has no answer. And the Fox News report notes that NBC News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This episode also has to be read in context. El-Sayed has faced other scrutiny in this race over his statements on Israel and Iran, and has been criticized for past remarks about former President Obama. Those questions deserve answers too. In a state as closely divided as Michigan, where the latest Fox News poll shows the race virtually tied, small moments of candor and evasion can decide an election.
Michigan voters should keep their standards high and consistent. A candidate who says “no” on national television should be able to back that answer with the record. If El-Sayed’s mother’s student activism in Egypt more than fifty years ago is simply a part of the family story that he does not endorse, he can say so plainly. If there is a more complicated history, voters deserve to hear it.
For his part, Rogers has the benefit of the issue being raised by mainstream reporters rather than only by his own campaign. That is worth remembering. The story did not originate with a partisan attack ad. It came from posts the candidate’s own half-sister published publicly more than a decade ago.
Honest politics runs on trust, and trust runs on straight answers. El-Sayed has asked Michigan to hand him a Senate seat. The least he can do is explain, in full sentences, the difference between what his family did, what he believes, and what he told the nation on Sunday morning.
