For Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, Sept. 11 commemoration invites scrutiny of past remarks
CBS
Zak Hudak
August 31, 2026
As the nation prepares to mark 25 years since Sept. 11, 2001, Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, may be facing the risk of renewed scrutiny and fresh political attack.
. . .
As El-Sayed heads into the fall general election campaign against Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, El-Sayed, a former public health official, has already been forced to distance himself from the views of Hasan Piker, a popular Twitch streamer who has appeared at El-Sayed’s campaign events and who generated controversy for declaring that “America deserved 9/11” before later retracting the remark.
Meanwhile, El-Sayed’s past references to the deadly attacks have continued to surface, including two deleted social media posts verified by CBS News that have not been previously reported. In those posts, he calls for the American public to muster the same outrage for the COVID-19 death toll that they displayed after 9/11.
In one, from April 2020, El-Sayed compared the nearly 3,000 Americans killed on Sept. 11 to the mounting COVID-19 death toll and argued for a response commensurate with the nation’s post-9/11 mobilization. In another, El-Sayed wrote that because more Americans had died from COVID than in the Sept. 11 attacks, he hoped “that means we’ll spend the next ten years fighting a war for public health & against poverty … like we launched a global #WaronTerror after 9/11. We could save lives rather than take them.”
. . .
In another deleted post, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, El-Sayed wrote on Sept. 11, 2021: “Today, I mourn the 3K lives, 6K injuries, & infrastructural devastation in NYC, perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my faith. Tomorrow, I’ll mourn ~1M lives, millions of injuries, & infrastructural devastation in 3 countries, perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my country.”
. . .
The Sept. 11 attacks have largely served as a source of unity in American politics. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people, launched two decades of military conflict and reshaped everything from foreign policy to airport security. For candidates seeking statewide office, even indirect references to the attacks can invite scrutiny that references to other tragedies might not.
Matt Grossmann, a political scientist at Michigan State University, said El-Sayed’s deleted social media posts are unlikely to damage his campaign on their own, but they feed a narrative pushed by his opponent that he holds fringe views.
“Is any specific tweet going to matter for the general election? It seems unlikely,” Grossmann said. “But does the general impression that he might be too extreme […] will that make a difference? That has a bigger chance of doing so.”
The more El-Sayed is questioned about his prior rhetoric, the less he will be able to wage successful attacks on his opponent, former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, said Democratic strategist and CBS News contributor Joel Payne.
. . .
More broadly, the Sept. 11 issue fits a recurring challenge for El-Sayed’s campaign. Throughout the race, he has repeatedly been pushed to explain controversial associations or comments touching on national security, foreign policy and extremism.
Read more here.