Abdul El-Sayed condemned US response to 9/11 that ‘scarred millions’ in resurfaced podcast comments
Ryan King
New York Post
September 8, 2026
Michigan Democratic Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed condemned America’s response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on his now-defunct podcast shortly before the 20th anniversary of the national tragedy.
On the Sept. 7, 2021, episode of “America Dissected,” El-Sayed intoned that “9/11 scarred our country in profound ways, but what we did after 9/11 scarred millions of other people.”
“When we talk about 9/11, we often fail to center them.”
El-Sayed contended that after the attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon, the US “wasted trillions of dollars to wage a war that we would ultimately lose” and condemned what he called an “era of death, destruction and destitution.”
“It is disqualifying for a US Senate Candidate to believe that Americans should ‘center’ their grief from 9/11,” Republican candidate Mike Rogers, who chaired the House Intelligence Committee between 2011 and 2015, told The Post.
“Abdul El-Sayed’s attitude towards the worst tragedy in American history is disgusting and makes him completely unfit to serve in public office.”
The Rogers campaign has responded to the resurfaced comments by rolling out testimonials of Michiganders who helped with cleanup and recovery operations at Ground Zero.
Four days after the podcast dropped, El-Sayed posted a since-deleted tweet that was similarly tone-deaf.
“Today, I mourn the 3K lives, 6K injuries, & infrastructural devastation in NYC, perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my faith,” El-Sayed wrote on Sept. 11, 2021.
“Tomorrow, I’ll mourn ~1M lives, millions of injuries, & infrastructural devastation in 3 countries, perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my country.”
During the Michigan primary, El-Sayed stumped with far-left, Mao-loving Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who once said that America “deserved” 9/11, before attempting to walk back the shocking remark.
…
However, El-Sayed also insisted that in the “post 9/11 era, the conversation in the United States tends to be centered in the United States.”
“I think the more appropriate way to center this conversation is in telling the broader global story about the conduct of the United States and what followed.”
…
###