There was a curious moment this week when Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed expressed shock that people were asking him about a “streamer in California” as he campaigns for the Senate in Michigan. That streamer is, of course, Hasan Piker. Despite El-Sayed’s disbelief, the questions stemmed from the fact that he brought Piker from California to campaign with him in Michigan and embraced him despite condemnations of Piker’s virulent antisemitism and violent rhetoric. However, the problem goes far deeper, as El-Sayed distances himself from views he has previously voiced.
It turns out that there are consequences to campaigning with a man who mocked the murder of a past critic and said that the United States deserved 9/11 (including responding to criticism of Piker in the primary by embracing him on election night at a rally). El-Sayed is not the only Democrat trying to get the media to stop asking him about his association.
Standing in front of a giant campaign billboard for El-Sayed, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D., Mich.) shot back at those asking about his association with a raving lunatic: “I am DONE. So don’t any reporter ask me again about Hasan Piker.” What is distressing is how many reporters will dutifully obey the command.
Dingell added, “They’re trying to divide us, and we’ve got to stop letting them try to divide us.” However, it is not divisive for your Senate candidate to campaign with a raging antisemite who says that the United States deserved 9-11 and that Jews are asking to be attacked.
The problem for Dingell and others is not so easily resolved by commanding a supportive media to not ask about Piker, who recently said on his podcast that Jews are asking to be attacked if they openly support Israel.
The problem is that El-Sayed has voiced equally disturbing and analogous views. El-Sayed was criticized for his response after a man attacked a Michigan synagogue in March. After condemning the attack, El-Sayed added that the Israeli military killed some of the attacker’s family in Lebanon, saying “hurt people hurt people.”
It sounds a bit like Jews are asking to be attacked.
El-Sayed has also drawn criticism for declining repeatedly to answer whether Israel has a right to exist during a CNN interview in June.
Much like Piker, El-Sayed has also engaged in violent rhetoric, promisung to “choke out” Republicans and referring to moderates like Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman (D) as ogres to have their heads cut off and put on pikes.
Refusing to answer questions about the association with Piker does not answer El-Sayed’s own views that align him with Piker.
Ironically, all the attention to Piker has drawn attention away from El-Sayed’s own views.
El-Sayed has extreme views that go beyond his position toward Israel and include wealth taxes, reparations, and radical changes to our constitutional system.
I grew up in a liberal, politically active Democratic family in Chicago. I no longer recognize that party today, including its anti-free-speech elements. Saying that you are a “Big Tent party” does not answer the question of whether the party stands for anything other than regaining power. There has to be some defining element to a party beyond power. El-Sayed is that defining moment.
The Affluent White Female Liberal, consumed with a blinding hatred of anything Trump combined with their absolute stupidity, will trade their incredible freedoms for genuine oppression and male patriarchy electing Muhammad El-Sayed Obama as US Senator.
Sharia law forbids abortion, requires women’s subjugation to every man, orders young girls to be forceably removed of their genitalia and girls as young as 9 years old to be non-consentually married to men well in their old age.
Be careful for what you wish, ladies.
The adage… women and children need a strong hand.
BTW, they’re not “ladies”.
A curious aspect of your article today is that hardy more than a generation ago, it wouldn’t have been written. People would have automatically rejected his duplicitous rhetoric. He would have been toast. But today, with lies reversed and slightly sanitized, he remains a viable contender. Those in the “Big Tent Party” (a new name?) automatically change their views on the fly. This is toast with a load of jelly piled on.
What’s that old expression? “Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies.”
You can put lipstick on a pig, but it still isn’t kosher.
Regarding Frof. Turley’s image of the Democrat Party: it seems that he was born too late to recall the southern Democrat segregationist block of Representatives and Senators and their “solid South”. I remember them and their “solid South” quite well. I also remember my father describing how in the early years of the 20th Century and into the mid-1920’s and beyond that same party embraced the KKK and U.S. Senators like “Cotton” Ed Smith and Governors like “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman.
There are those who think and believe God gave Israel to the Jewish people long ago. It’s been taken by this group or that. Nothing actually changes the fact God gave Israel to the Jewish people.
It’s a race to the bottom as professor Turley has pointed out. Most of politics is nonsense and the remainder is common crime of thievery and murder.
Fatigue
I’m not sure what your introductory comment has to do with anything written here…What has the Republican nominee said or done that matches the depths of the Democrat’s nominee?
I am hoping, hoping, hoping that Professor Turley’s last paragraph indicates he is finally deciding to abandon the Democrat party that abandoned him.
It shouldn’t be possible for the man who wrote the great book Rage and the Republic to be a member of the rage party.
Rage party? You mean this blog on which you spew hate and rage at Democrats, DSA, liberals and communists?
Abandon? Why should he? And what would it prove? Don’t bother answering, anything you write is ….
Anonymous, the term “let him speak” comes to mind when we see your constant juvenile rants, your attempts to sabotage this site and your proof that our education system is a disaster.
Hey Anonymous, serious question, how old are you? I will happily admit to being a senior citizen but I would love to know what age someone with your propensity for nastiness, your constant commenting with the most inane replies really is. I am guessing that you are an underemployed, 20-30 year old with a huge student loan outstanding, no house, no apartment, no girl friend, no car and not even a license.
Your comemnt perfectly describes you.
Rants, sabotage, proof, nastiness, constant commenting (is that a new kind crime eh?) inane … whew… then the ad hominid twist. Typical for troglodyte.
Living rent free ….
BRAVO! hullbobby
And yet you return for the daily hatefest……
And here you are too.
“There has to be some defining element to a party…”, how about ‘power to the people’?
Anonymous,
“Power to the people”? Yes. And please remember this. We the People elected President Donald J. Trump twice … the second time with a majority of the Popular Vote and the Electoral Vote. So you have the President who you want.
We the people? The 70 million would voted for him, and what about the other 70 million who did not, they are “we the people” too?
So its about power, forcing others to your will?
My conclusion, you’re no different than the liberals in your quest for power and control.
The most important fact is being overlooked. Influential voices in America’s largest political party have succeeded in changing America. America used to be a nation where bias-based-on-skin-color and Jew-hatred were not debatable … they were odious. Now America is a nation where they are debatable. May God bless America.
Your God has abandoned America.
And the godless have taken over.
Not quite taken over, just racing to do so. If there are (and I have my doubts) enough educated, non-indoctrinated, sane people to push back against us I see us heading to what Ireland is experiencing now. Americans who have known true liberty are not the same as the previous Russian serf, the cowered Chinese peasant or the ignorant of such small nations a N Korea, Venezuela, Cuba etc. who only saw the latest communist push as just a question of “what could be worse than what I have now”. It will not be a matter of just convincing the proletariat that things will be better. Rational and literate Americans who remember the good past and can see where communism leads will not swallow the spew of the likes of mamdani. Our largest threat comes for indoctrinated college students, elitist whites suffering suicidal empathy, and the demographic shift of unfettered illegals and islamists.
Educating, as in college degrees, people is not key to taking back you country.
Teaching children is, I think is what you mean. Start there, work on them for 18 years and you get a good citizen?
Sadly, the education industry has a monopoly on kids brains.
You republicans need a strategy. And I haven’t seen one … yet?
Stephen: Excellent point. I, too, find myself wondering when did it become okay to be an open bigot. Putting aside the fanatical craziness of El-Sayad and Piker, even a “regular” college student at Cornell thinks that it is perfectly normal to announce to the world that he doesn’t want to work for a Jew.