Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed joined NBC’s Meet the Press this morning for an interview, where he harkened back to his Islamic roots, saying he was inspired by Barack Obama and defending calls for violence against the United States.
Early in the interview, El-Sayed discussed Obama, and he later suggested that it’s totally fine to say “America deserved 9/11.”
News broke earlier that Barack Obama spoke with El-Sayed by phone on Friday, though details of the call remain unclear. The call was a “warm encouraging discussion and look forward to working together to unite Democrats to win Michigan in November,” a spokesperson for El-Sayed told Politico on Sunday.
El-Sayed, unironically calling Obama by his full name, Barack Hussein Obama, said he never saw himself as eligible to run for office until Obama became the President. Perhaps Abdul has a fake birth certificate.
El-Sayed told NBC’s Kristen Welker, “I like to keep private conversations private, but it was a really warm and inspiring conversation.”
“I never saw myself ever able to run for public office. I literally told former President Bill Clinton that at my college graduation, in which I was the senior speaker and he was the main speaker, and I then watched the next year Barack Hussein Obama run for and win the presidency,” he said.
“I watched him serve with a level of class, a level of elegance that we could only pine for now. So I really enjoyed the conversation. I was grateful for his advice; it was very warm, very inviting, and I know that he knows the critical role that Michigan is going to play in holding Trump accountable, in winning back the Senate, and in building forward the future that we need.”
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He was later asked to disavow Communist influencer Hasan Piker, previously saying, “America deserved 9/11.” And he did, but also defended the comment, suggesting it was taken “out of context,” and he credited “gocha politics” and “cancel culture” for the controversy.
“Of course. Of course, it was a dumb statement, and of course, I think Hassan himself would say that was a dumb statement. He disavowed it. So yes, America didn’t deserve 9/11, but you know, to sit here and play gotcha politics with dumb things somebody said out of context that they disavowed themselves to say, ‘Oh well, what does that mean about what you think?’” he said.
He then laughably claimed the left agreed that cancel culture was a “bad idea back in 2020,” and accused Republicans of embracing the so-called relic of left-wing politics as if cancel culture isn’t alive and well today in the Democratic Party. Never mind the fact that it’s gotten worse.
“I want to be held accountable for what I say and what I do, rather than this idea that we’re so stuck in cancel culture that all of us agreed was a bad idea back in 2020, but we seem to want to bring back,” he added.
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