If Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed hoped to move past the controversy over his ties to Hasan Piker and his own deleted 9/11 tweets, his upcoming schedule suggests otherwise.
El-Sayed is the top-billed speaker at the Islamic Society of North America’s annual convention in Detroit, where he is slated to join a panel discussion on a “turmoiled America” alongside Cenk Uygur—host of The Young Turks—and Zaid Shakir, a New Jersey cleric who has questioned the official narrative of the September 11 attacks. The event falls just days before the 25th anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil, as first reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
Shakir has called for an “examination” of the official 9/11 account, arguing there are “glaring weaknesses and inconsistencies.” Uygur—who is also Piker’s uncle—went further in a February X post, declaring, “I no longer believe official 9/11 story,” citing what he called contradictions in the official account and suggesting a need to look into “who gained from 9/11.”
“To my normie friends who’ll be outraged by this, we have been brainwashed by corporate media all our lives,” Uygur wrote. “They said that anything that isn’t the official government story is a ‘conspiracy theory’ only insane people believe, to gaslight you into never questioning the government.”
El-Sayed’s decision to share a stage with these figures is the latest chapter in a controversy that has dogged his campaign for months, as The Daily Wire has extensively documented. The candidate has repeatedly refused to distance himself from Piker, the left-wing streamer who has said America “deserved 9/11,” even as Democrats within his own party have urged him to do so.
Deleted Tweets Resurface
The controversy deepened last week when CBS News reported on a series of 9/11-related tweets that El-Sayed had deleted from his account. Two posts from 2020 compared the U.S. government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic to its reaction to 9/11.
In one, El-Sayed reportedly argued for a national mobilization against the virus that would mirror the post-9/11 effort. In another, as the U.S. COVID death toll surpassed the number killed on September 11, he wrote that he hoped “that means we’ll spend the next ten years fighting a war for public health & against poverty … like we launched a global #WaronTerror after 9/11. We could save lives rather than take them.”
On the 20th anniversary of the attacks, El-Sayed posted a tweet that suggested America’s response to 9/11 had caused more harm than the attacks themselves. “Today, I mourn the 3K lives, 6K injuries, & infrastructural devastation in NYC, perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my faith,” he wrote. “Tomorrow, I’ll mourn ~1M lives, millions of injuries, & infrastructural devastation in 3 countries, perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my country.”
Matt Grossmann, a political scientist at Michigan State University, told CBS News that while a single deleted tweet is unlikely to sink El-Sayed’s campaign, the cumulative effect could be damaging. “Is any specific tweet going to matter for the general election? It seems unlikely,” Grossmann said. “But does the general impression that he might be too extreme … will that make a difference? That has a bigger chance of doing so.”
An Escalating Pattern
El-Sayed’s association with Piker has been a persistent liability. The candidate has not only declined to condemn Piker’s inflammatory rhetoric about 9/11 but has also appeared on Piker’s shows and accepted his endorsement. Within-party pressure to cut ties has so far gone unheeded.
Now, by appearing alongside Uygur and Shakir at the Detroit convention, El-Sayed is wading deeper into the very controversy he has tried to avoid. The panel’s timing—just before the 25th anniversary of 9/11—amplifies the political stakes. Rather than quelling concerns about his judgment, the decision is likely to intensify scrutiny of a candidate already facing questions about where his allegiances lie.
El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment on the panel participation or the resurfaced tweets, but by choosing to share a platform with known 9/11 truthers, he has signaled that he is not running away from the controversy. In fact, he appears to be embracing it.
Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/abdul-el-sayeds-9-11-problems-just-keep-getting-worse