Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed told a town hall audience last July that the United States needs to "understand" what drives people to commit terrorism, and accused Americans of being "high and mighty" in how they view global conflict. His Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, says El-Sayed has "no business" running for public office.
The exchange, captured on video at a town hall in South Haven, Michigan, surfaced after the Washington Free Beacon first obtained the footage. A constituent asked El-Sayed how he would address terrorism if elected to the Senate. His answer has now become a flashpoint in one of the most closely watched races of the 2026 midterms.
El-Sayed, a medical doctor, former Wayne County health director, and the son of Egyptian immigrants, did not reject the premise of the question. Instead, he framed terrorism as a symptom of deeper grievances that American leaders refuse to examine. The remarks fit a pattern of statements and associations that Republicans say disqualify him from office.
When the constituent pressed him on terrorism, El-Sayed acknowledged that current U.S. approaches to combating terror are "necessary." But he quickly pivoted to a different emphasis. As Fox News Digital reported, El-Sayed told the audience:
"I also think we need to be curious about why those things happen in the first place, like, [what] drives somebody to want to commit such a heinous act."
He went further, casting himself as someone whose medical background equips him to diagnose the roots of political violence. El-Sayed said:
"I have to be a student of people's pain. Like, that's, that's what I did in medicine. That's what I try to do in politics. Like, what, what happens when people are in pain?"
Then came the line that drew the sharpest criticism. El-Sayed described terrorists as people gripped by desperation, telling the crowd:
"There is a level of pain and frustration and a level of lack of agency that they have to feel to do something so insane and absurd, right?"
He did not stop there. El-Sayed turned his critique on the United States itself, accusing the country of hypocrisy in how it conducts foreign policy. He told the audience that America had built a "rules-based international order" and then broken its own rules.
"That's hypocritical, and that's wrong."
El-Sayed wrapped up by calling for "empathy," "wisdom," "justice," and "consistency" in how the United States engages with the world, language that, stripped of context, sounds anodyne enough. But placed alongside his other comments, it reads as an argument that American conduct shares responsibility for the terrorism directed against it.
Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate candidate in Michigan, wasted no time. In a statement to Fox News Digital, Rogers said the remarks revealed a candidate whose worldview is fundamentally at odds with American security interests.
"It's a scary world we live in where Democrats now make excuses for terrorists. And even more terrifying, it's this level of radicalism that is propelling Abdul to the front of the primary."
Rogers then connected the town hall comments to a broader record. He pointed to El-Sayed's previous accusation that Israel committed genocide against Palestinians, his association with internet personality Hasan Piker, and what Rogers described as a refusal to condemn a terror attack.
"These heinous comments are no surprise after he fundraised off of October 7, refused to disavow Hasan Piker saying that 'America deserved 9/11,' and called it a 'risk' to condemn a terror attack that nearly mass murdered 140 kids in our own backyard. It's indefensible."
Piker, the internet personality Rogers referenced, has aligned himself with Hamas. He has said Hamas is a "thousand times better" than Israel and that he would vote for Hamas over Israel "every single time." El-Sayed has campaigned alongside Piker.
Fox News Digital reached out to El-Sayed for comment on the town hall footage. No response was reported.
The town hall video is not the only recording causing problems for El-Sayed. Leaked audio from a campaign strategy session, reported by the New York Post, captured him telling staff he did not want to comment on the killing of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei because of how it would land with Muslim voters in Dearborn.
"I also want to remind you guys that there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad today," El-Sayed said on the call. "So, like, I just don't want to comment on Khamenei at all. Like, I don't think it's worth even touching that."
The audio, reportedly from a March 1 campaign session, also revealed El-Sayed's plan for handling press questions about the killing. Rather than address it directly, he told staff he would pivot to attacking Donald Trump and criticizing Israel and AIPAC. As Newsmax reported, El-Sayed treated the political sensitivities of a key voter bloc as the overriding factor in how to handle a major foreign-policy event.
We covered the full scope of those leaked remarks when the audio first surfaced. The picture that emerges is of a candidate who calibrates his public positions around the political preferences of voters sympathetic to a hostile foreign regime, not around the national-security interests of the country he wants to represent in the Senate.
Taken together, the town hall video and the leaked campaign audio do not look like isolated missteps. They suggest a consistent approach: treat terrorism as a grievance to be understood, treat American foreign policy as the real problem, and treat the political feelings of voters who mourn a dead dictator as a constraint on what you can say out loud.
El-Sayed has embraced comparisons between himself and Zohran Mamdani, a New York politician who has drawn his own controversies. He has been endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders. He has previously accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians. And he has shared a stage with a man who told the world that America deserved the worst terrorist attack in its history.
This is not a fringe candidate running in a safe district with no chance of winning. El-Sayed is competing in a Democratic primary for Michigan's open Senate seat, a race that could determine control of the chamber. His primary opponents include Rep. Haley Stevens and Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow. Whether either of them will challenge El-Sayed on these remarks remains to be seen.
The broader Democratic Party faces a recurring question on national security: will its leaders draw clear lines, or will they let the loudest voices on their left flank set the terms? Some Democrats, like Sen. John Fetterman, have broken with their party over exactly this kind of equivocation on Israel and Iran. Others have gone the opposite direction.
El-Sayed's comments at the South Haven town hall are a case study in the kind of reasoning that treats American power as the root cause of the violence directed against it. He told a room full of Michigan voters that the people who commit terrorism feel "pain and frustration" and a "lack of agency." He told them the United States is "hypocritical" and "wrong." He offered "empathy" as the answer.
What he did not offer was a single word of unqualified condemnation for the people who fly planes into buildings, bomb marathons, or target children at concerts. That omission is not a slip. It is a worldview.
The same instinct that led El-Sayed to urge "curiosity" about terrorist motives led him to duck questions about the death of a man who sponsored terrorism across the globe, because some of his voters were "sad." The question is whether Michigan Democrats will reward that instinct or reject it. The broader Democratic drift on Iran suggests the answer is not obvious.
Meanwhile, Rogers is framing the general election contrast early. If El-Sayed wins the primary, Michigan voters will face a choice between a candidate who calls terrorists' motives a subject for empathy and one who calls those motives indefensible. That is not a close call for most Americans, even if it apparently is for a growing wing of the Democratic Party.
There is a difference between studying why terrorism happens and treating the terrorists as the real victims. El-Sayed's brand of moral equivalence may play well in certain corners of a Democratic primary. It should not play well anywhere near the United States Senate.
A candidate who cannot plainly condemn terror without first lecturing Americans about their own sins has no business setting policy for the country those terrorists want to destroy.