Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed apologized this past weekend to Jewish Democrats over comments he made after a March attack on a suburban Detroit synagogue, while refusing to distance himself from left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, a vocal supporter of his campaign.
Speaking Saturday at the Michigan Democratic Party’s Jewish Caucus meeting during the state convention in Lansing, and in an interview with Fox News Digital, El-Sayed addressed criticism of his response to the attack, in which federal investigators say a gunman inspired and radicalized by Hezbollah crashed into a synagogue intending to kill as many Jewish people as possible. The alleged attacker, a Lebanese-born man, had lost relatives a week earlier in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon.
At the time, El-Sayed said “Hurt people, hurt people” in response to the attack. The remark drew criticism from members of his own party, including Michigan Secretary of State Dana Nessel, who raised the comments in an interview with The Atlantic and skipped this year’s convention partly over concerns about antisemitism in the party.
“To anybody who feels like my comments may have been hurtful, I’m really sorry. That was not my intention. We condemned that terrorist attack. We condemned it outright,” El-Sayed told Fox News Digital. “What I was trying to do was offer context for why it happened, but it wasn’t the time for context and you don’t ever want to trample somebody’s pain.”
El-Sayed, an epidemiologist and former Wayne County Health Department director, would become the nation’s first Muslim senator if elected in November. He has opposed unconditional U.S. military aid to Israel and has repeatedly declined to say directly whether Israel has the right to exist.
“We may not agree on everything when it comes to foreign policy… I’m not going to stop fighting for Palestinian self-determination… but that does not mean that I will not stand up… for safety for all communities and I believe in the safety and dignity of Jewish kids like I believe in the safety and dignity of my own kids,” El-Sayed said.
Daniel Rivkin, a convention delegate and member of the Jewish Caucus, told Fox News Digital El-Sayed “just had a very good meeting with us,” adding, “We’re having real conversations.” The campaign is also in the process of hiring a Jewish liaison, Fox News Digital confirmed Monday.
Republican Rival Calls It a “Sham Apology”
Former Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate nominee making his second straight run for the seat after falling roughly 20,000 votes short in 2024, dismissed El-Sayed’s remarks. “When someone says you might have been offended by what I said, that’s not an apology,” Rogers said Monday on “Fox and Friends,” adding that El-Sayed “has a long history of antisemitic and inflammatory comments.”
Rogers also said Democratic Jewish voters have been contacting his campaign directly. “We’ve had so many Democrat Jewish people here in the state of Michigan ring up our phone and say, ‘I can’t do this. I’m for you,'” he said.
On Saturday, a group of Jewish leaders in Michigan published an open letter urging Jewish Democrats and independents to back Rogers instead, writing that El-Sayed’s allies have engaged in “demonization of Jews, equivocation on terrorism, exclusion of Jewish Americans from public life, and expression of implacable hatred of the world’s only Jewish nation.”
El-Sayed Won’t Drop Piker
El-Sayed’s outreach to Jewish voters is complicated by his ongoing association with Piker, who endorsed him in the primary and appeared at campaign events, including his primary-night party in Detroit. Piker recently featured on his stream an image of state Sen. Jeremy Moss, the Jewish Democratic nominee in Michigan’s 11th Congressional District, tied to a fake audio clip claiming Moss is running for Congress solely to ensure continued U.S. support for Israel.
Piker said on his stream: “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 has also previously said “America deserved 9/11,” praised Mao Zedong and Communist China, and argued that capitalists should be murdered in the streets.
Asked directly by reporters Saturday to repudiate Piker, El-Sayed declined. “We’re in the state of Michigan. If you want to make this race about a streamer in California, I just think you’re missing the boat,” he said. “This is about affordability in Michigan. This is about seeing a doctor in Michigan. This is about Donald Trump’s disastrous policies in Michigan. That’s what I’m focused on right now.” He repeated that Piker is “a streamer from California” and called continued questions about him “not a serious conversation.” He also said, “I want to be crystal clear, nobody speaks for this campaign besides me and my campaign spokespeople.”
Party Infighting Continues
El-Sayed defeated moderate Rep. Haley Stevens in the Democratic primary, a result widely seen as a major win for the party’s left flank over its establishment. The Senate seat is one Democrats must hold to have a chance at retaking the chamber in the midterms.
The broader fight over the party’s direction played out over the weekend. Republican National Committee Chair Joe Gruters, speaking Monday at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s summit in Las Vegas, said “the same hatred that fueled” the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, which killed roughly 1,200 people, “is growing right here in our backyard. It has found a home in the Democratic Party.”
Former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, weighing a 2028 presidential run, told Fox News’ Shannon Bream that Democratic Socialists are not part of the Democratic Party. “They believe in defunding police, letting prisoners out of prison, opening borders, eliminating the Pentagon. If you’re so confident people want that, I’ll see you in November. Put it on the ballot. Let’s go. Run as a separate party,” Emanuel said.
Democratic strategist Julian Epstein wrote in the New York Post that party leaders have “taken cover behind the empty ‘Big Tent’ lie as radical DSA members and allies, like Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed and Colorado’s Melat Kiros, triumph in Democratic primaries.”
Rep. Jeff Crank, R-Colo., has introduced a resolution “condemning socialism in all its forms,” which could come to a House vote this week. Crank told Fox News Digital the vote is intended to force moderate House Democrats to publicly distance themselves from the DSA.
