Progressive hopeful Abdul El-Sayed is under fire after a leaked conference call revealed him urging staff to steer clear of celebrating the reported killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — not out of geopolitics, but out of concern for local optics.
“I also want to remind you guys that there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad today,” El-Sayed said on the call. “So, like, I just don’t want to comment on Khamenei at all. Like, I don’t think it’s worth even touching that.”
The audio, first reported by Alana Goodman of the Washington Free Beacon, lit up political circles Monday and was quickly weaponized by Republicans. The Republican National Senatorial Committee blasted out the clip online under a glaring warning: “LEAKED AUDIO FROM ABDUL EL-SAYED ON THE DEATH OF IRAN’S SUPREME LEADER.”
🚨LEAKED AUDIO FROM ABDUL EL-SAYED ON THE DEATH OF IRAN’S SUPREME LEADER:
“I also want to remind you guys that there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad today. So like, I just don’t want to comment on Khamenei at all.” pic.twitter.com/Ai6JwOw6Fm
— Senate Republicans (@NRSC) March 30, 2026
According to the report, El-Sayed didn’t just want silence — he had a plan to pivot. When pressed about Khamenei, whose regime brutally crushed protests in recent weeks, the candidate floated a strategy to dodge the topic entirely.
“I’m just gonna go straight to pedophilia, frankly,” he told aides. “I’ll just be like, ‘Pedophile president decides that he doesn’t like the front page news, so he decides to take us into another war.’”
He doubled down on the approach, insisting, “We have the moral high ground here,” while cautioning that reporters would try to trap the campaign into conceding that Khamenei’s killing might be justified. The response, he said, should be a firm refusal: “We’ve got to be, like, ‘no.’”
The timing couldn’t be worse for El-Sayed, who’s already been dogged by controversy.
Just days earlier, he faced backlash over a planned rally appearance with polarizing Twitch personality Hasan Piker — a figure critics accuse of promoting extremist rhetoric and inflammatory views.
Rival candidate Mallory McMorrow didn’t hold back.
“[Piker] is a provocateur, to put it lightly, who says things that are misogynistic and antisemitic, and said that the United States deserved 9/11,” McMorrow said. She added, “That is not somebody that you should be campaigning with at a moment when there is clearly a lot of pain and trauma across our state.”
Her warning was blunt: “How do you bring everybody together, especially when there are difficult conversations, where there aren’t easy answers? You don’t fan the flames and stoke division just to get attention.”
And that wasn’t the only political tightrope.
Earlier in the week, Punchbowl News reported that El-Sayed privately warned it could be a “risk” to condemn a recent attack on a Michigan synagogue and preschool. Though he later issued a statement denouncing the violence, he linked the incident to the suspect’s personal loss tied to an Israeli airstrike — a framing that raised further questions.
Now, with leaked audio, controversial alliances, and mounting criticism, El-Sayed finds himself battling not just for votes — but for political survival in a race that’s quickly turning into a bare-knuckle brawl.
