The question came from a voter named "Tommy." The answer is still ricocheting online. At a town hall in heavily pro-Trump Caro, Mich., on Saturday, Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed was asked if he would reject the Muslim Brotherhood. "Sure. Yeah, absolutely," replied El-Sayed, who would be the first Muslim US senator, before pressing the man on why he assumed El-Sayed had "dual loyalties," per the Guardian. El-Sayed, whom President Trump has accused without evidence of being a "jihadist" and "100%" Muslim Brotherhood, likened the scrutiny of his faith to what John F. Kennedy faced as a Catholic, saying he's running for Senate and "happen[s] to be Muslim."
Video of the exchange, posted by his campaign, drew more than 30,000 comments by Sunday afternoon. The Washington Post calls it "a political Rorschach test," noting that many people saw El-Sayed shooting down an Islamophobic attack, while others, namely former Trump official Tricia McLaughlin, insisted he looked bad "trying to dress down a voter." El-Sayed had questioned "Tommy"—identified by the Guardian as Thomas Teepell, a former aide to GOP Sen. Josh Hawley—about why he felt a Muslim candidate needed to disavow a terrorist group. "Have you asked everybody in your life if they disavow them?" he asked, per the Hill. "So why are you asking me?"
In an unusual move, CBS News' chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford appeared to side with Teepell, writing on X that El-Sayed's "uninterrupted three-minute diatribe proving your exact point is the kind of spectacular self own most [people] only dream about triggering." Other journalists accused her of "editorializing," while CNN's Karen Finney blasted her for trying to "spread false, racist lies about Abdul because he is Muslim," per the Guardian. Crawford later apologized and deleted the post, saying it was "a violation of CBS News standards."
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