Asked several times during the Michigan Senate debate on Thursday night if he would send defensive weapons to Israel if it was attacked by Iran or another country, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee and a former Detroit health director, sidestepped the question several times.
El-Sayed said that he’s been “absolutely clear” that he wants tax dollars spent locally on schools and healthcare. “That is my priority,” he said. He accused Israel of having “pushed us” to go to war in Iran for “the annexation of southern Lebanon.”
“If there was an attack, would you provide defensive weapons for Israel?” the moderator, Rick Albin, WOOD-TV 8 political reporter in Grand Rapids, Mich., asked a second time.
“I don’t want our tax dollars buying weapons for other countries,” El-Sayed said. “I don’t know what’s so hard about that.”
“That’s a ‘no,’” Albin said.
Former Republican congressman Mike Rogers, the GOP nominee, cut in. “I’ll answer the question,” he said. “Absolutely, he won’t. He will not. Matter of fact, he would not even support the Iron Dome.”
Albin asked El-Sayed if Israel or Iran presented a bigger threat to the United States.
The Democrat called the question a “ridiculous hypothetical,” since “our ostensible ally in Israel has lobbied us to go to war with Iran. We have watched as Iran has responded by bombing all kinds of countries in the Middle East and then choking off the world’s energy supply.”
“So this is a situation in which I don’t think we should be a part,” El-Sayed said. “I don’t want to be pushed into war by Israel, and I don’t want to be in a war with Iran”
He called “both of them kind of dangerous.”
“I’ll ask one last time,” Albin said. “Israel or Iran?”
“That’s again a ridiculous question,” El-Sayed said. “I think both of them have proven dangerous in their own way. One at risk of attacking us. One getting us into wars we have no business fighting.”
The moderator asked Rogers about his pledge of “unconditional support for Israel’s right to defend herself” and if there was anything the Israeli government could do that would lead him to stop supporting sending U.S. military aid to the Jewish state.
The Republican called it a “pretty hypothetical question.”
Rogers said that he “staunchly” supports Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and to defend itself “in a very difficult neighborhood.”
The Republican said that El-Sayed’s “biggest funders are from a group that supports the Muslim Brotherhood. He gets money from people who support, openly, Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda.”
“Is there anything Israel could do that would lose your support?” Albin pressed.
“Listen. If they’re talking about using nuclear weapons, they would definitely lose my support,” Rogers said. “I’ve never heard them say that, though.”
‘Keep this orderly’
In the about hour-long debate, which spent a good deal of time on the Middle East, El-Sayed presented himself early on as a regular person. “I’m a doctor, and I’m a dad,” he said.
Rogers described him differently. “He’s not really a doctor. He says he’s a physician. Not a matter of fact,” Rogers said. “If somebody came into his office, and he tried to treat that patient, he’d go to jail.”
Later on, Rogers accused El-Sayed of being silent on Oct. 7, instead of issuing a statement about the Hamas-led massacre.
“I’m not somebody who tries to make political theater out of other people’s pain,” the Democrat said.
Rogers countered that El-Sayed engaged in political theater when he campaigned wearing a white jacket.
U.S. President Donald Trump stated that “Mike Rogers, the great American patriot and Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Michigan, completely obliterated Mohammed El-Sayed in the big debate tonight.”
He again referred to El-Sayed with part of his full name.
“If this was a fight they would have stopped it. Mohammed is a jihadist lunatic, who hates our country, the black people of Detroit and wants to see the United States fail,” Trump stated. “Short on stature, patriotism and truth, Mohammed’s statements have been loaded up with lies and deceit.”
Sam Markstein, national political director and spokesman of the Republican Jewish Coalition, told JNS that “no amount of debate-stage spin can erase Abdul El-Sayed’s abysmal record.”
That records includes “making excuses for the Hezbollah-inspired terrorist that attacked Jewish preschoolers at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, libelously smearing Israel as ‘bloodthirsty’ and ‘just as evil’ as Hamas, campaigning with notorious bigot Hasan Piker, who said ‘America deserved 9/11,’ and on the third anniversary of Oct. 7, El-Sayed couldn’t muster one word about the monstrous massacre of innocents in Israel, including the murder of 46 Americans,” Markstein said.
“Every day, Abdul El-Sayed shows us exactly who he is,” he told JNS. “It’s why so many lifelong Jewish Democrats in Michigan—rabbis, community leaders and longtime party activists and donors—are saying they will not vote for him.”
Michigan deserves a senator “as good as its people,” and someone “who stands with its Jewish community,” Markstein said. “That’s Mike Rogers. A distinguished Army veteran and former FBI special agent, who chaired the House Intelligence Committee.”
The RJC “will continue to spend every day between now and Nov. 3 making sure Michigan knows the difference between Mike Rogers, who stands with us, and Abdul El-Sayed, who will defend the people who come after us,” he told JNS.
Iran came up often in the debate. El-Sayed accused Rogers of having “cheer-led” the war, which he said will maintain Iranian regime “chokeholds” the Hormuz Strait, and raising gas and energy prices, the longer the war goes on.
“We cannot afford Abdul,” Rogers responded.
El-Sayed said that Rogers, whom he called a “sock puppet for the Trump administration,” had “a direct line to the president, who is making sure the war does not end, and he’s not using it, because he’s cheer-led this war the entire time.”
The moderator sought often to keep the two candidates on topic, as they traded barbs, accusing each other of corruption and being out of touch with voters. “I appreciate your passion, but please, let’s try to keep this orderly,” Albin said at one point.
Later on, Rogers said that El-Sayed is “kind of like a glitchy, AI chat bot,” who says “the same thing over and over and over again.”
“But let me tell you this. He has taken money from groups associated and support the Muslim Brotherhood,” Rogers said. “He has taken money from individuals on his campaign who openly support Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda.”
The Republican Jewish Coalition has called El-Sayed “the most antisemitic U.S. Senate candidate in America.”
“He’s taken money from the George Soros family. What we found out is this thing goes way back,” Rogers said at the debate. “Apparently, they paid for his education in Columbia. Now, they’re paying for his campaign. By the way, that’s a billionaire last I checked.”
Rogers said that El-Sayed owns property in the United Arab Emirates, who “lied about being a physician” and “lied about being an Egyptian citizen or not being an Egyptian citizen. I can’t figure out what he is today.”
“That’s a con man,” Rogers said.
El-Sayed told viewers that he might be “old-fashioned, but I believe in diplomacy.”
“Diplomacy is what the Obama administration had used to negotiate a scenario, in which Iran, where we did not have proliferation of nuclear material,” he said. “We were at a steady state, except for Donald Trump just doesn’t like anything that President Obama has done.”
It was “completely unnecessary” to declare war on the Iranian regime, El-Sayed said. “We literally taught the Iranian regime that they had a choke on the Strait of Hormuz, and now we’re living in that reality.”
Rogers said that there should be an end to the war, and that the United States has greatly diminished the Iranian military and set the regime’s nuclear program back “at least 20 years.”
“They still have some limited capability to inflict harm on their neighbors. This would be the time to wrap it up,” he said. “That was the stated intent.”
He accused El-Sayed of being soft on the matter.
“My opponent here would not condemn the IRGC,” the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a U.S.-designated terror organization, he said. “This is the same IRGC, which today is hanging two 19-year-old kids for saying they want freedom in their homeland. This is the same IRGC that has killed American troops in Iraq.”
“It has blood on their hands. Tried a terrorist attack here in the United States,” he said. “If you can’t condemn the IRGC, you have no business in the United States Senate.”
“That is an ideological problem that we cannot allow to walk into the United States Senate,” Rogers said.
El-Sayed said that Rogers had a war for every international problem. He did not denounce the IRGC.
“He can’t condemn Hamas. He can’t condemn the Muslim Brotherhood. He says his home is Egypt,” Rogers said. “This is all starting to make sense.”
“I’d like to be part of the debate too,” the moderator said, as El-Sayed pointed out that Rogers has a home in Florida, and the Republican countered that the Democrat had a home in the United Arab Emirates.
