El-Sayed pushes to keep affordability message focus amid scrutiny from both sides

Democratic Senate candidate for Michigan distances himself from Hasan Piker and debates Fox News host

The Democratic candidate for Senate in the swing state of Michigan has spent the week trying to keep his affordability message front and center as scrutiny mounts from both ends of the political spectrum.

In the span of two days, Abdul El-Sayed distanced himself from leftwing streamer Hasan Piker, spoke out against rightwing hate directed at the Muslim community, and debated Fox News host Jesse Watters on taxing billionaires. The clip circulating most from the Fox interview, though, focused on circumcision - specifically, El-Sayed asking Watters if he was, in a retort to Watters’ question about gender-affirming care.

In each instance, El-Sayed tried relentlessly to stay on message. On Fox, he called opponent Mike Rogers a “beta” and took a jab at Pete Hegseth in a response to a question about the federal deficit, saying Watters didn’t seem concerned that the defense secretary, “the guy who used to work on your channel”, wanted to increase the military budget to $1.5tn.

“Why, so we could fight a war we don’t know how to get out of, to raise our gas prices $5 a gallon?” El-Sayed said.

At a press conference condemning Islamaphobic agitator and January 6 rioter Jake Lang on Tuesday morning, El-Sayed emphasized a religious unity message in Michigan, then brought it back to Rogers and the cost of groceries.

Perhaps the most heated dialogue this week, however, has been between centrist Democrats and the left wing of the party about controversial political streamer Piker.

In the most recent dustup, Piker called out Jeremy Moss, who is Jewish and running for Congress in Michigan’s 11th district, for not endorsing El-Sayed. Moss has said he’s not ready to endorse El-Sayed because of their differing views on Israel.

“If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone is going to come around and take action, not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews,” Piker said in a stream. “I don’t know how people don’t recognize how dangerous this predicament is, how dangerous this is for Jews.”

The comments were met with an online anger from some prominent Democrats, including the House speaker, Hakeem Jeffries, who didn’t mention Piker by name but called the comments “dangerous and antisemitic”. Politico reported that Representative Hillary Scholten, a Democrat, does not want put her name on campaign literature with El-Sayed due to his association with Piker.

Others defended Piker, saying he did not call for violence, but that Israel’s actions had dangerous effects on the safety of Jews.

El-Sayed campaigned with Piker during the Democratic primary, which his Democratic opponents at the time took issue with because of the Twitch streamer’s comments on Israel.

“If Abdul El-Sayed had any courage at all, he would call this out and disavow Hasan Piker once and for all.