THE DAILY BS: HOW MUCH CAN YOU HANDLE?
SPARE ME THE BS (I’ve got things to do).
- Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed compared questions about his family’s reported Muslim Brotherhood connections to the religious scrutiny John F. Kennedy faced.
- His half-sister previously posted that their mother had been active in the Muslim Brotherhood during college in Egypt in the early 1970s.
- El-Sayed denies personal ties and calls suggestions of divided loyalty “crazy,” but has not independently established whether his half-sister’s account of their mother’s history is accurate.
LAY IT ON ME (I’ve got time).
Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has found a historical comparison for the questions surrounding his family’s reported Muslim Brotherhood connections.
John F. Kennedy.
During a Saturday appearance on MS NOW, host Ali Velshi asked El-Sayed how he responds to repeated questions about the Muslim Brotherhood, terrorism and radical Islamism.
El-Sayed said the questions were designed to suggest he has divided loyalties.
“Look, at the end of the day, the whole reason this question is being asked is to insinuate that somehow I have dual loyalties,” he said.
He then compared his situation to Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign, when the Catholic candidate faced questions about whether his allegiance would be to the Constitution or the Vatican.
El-Sayed said he isn’t running to become the first Muslim senator, but simply Michigan’s next senator.
He called it “a crazy thing to assume” he would have divided loyalties, pointing to his support for abortion rights, LGBTQ rights and religious freedom.
But the immediate controversy involves something more specific than El-Sayed’s religion.
His half-sister, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi, posted in 2012 that she had discussed their mother’s involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood while attending college in Egypt during the early 1970s.
“Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college #respect,” she wrote.
That account has become a campaign issue because El-Sayed previously answered “No” when NBC’s Kristen Welker asked whether he or his family had any ties to the organization.
In a subsequent NBC interview, Tom Llamas pressed him about the contradiction.
El-Sayed said he was born in 1984, wasn’t raised by his biological mother and had never discussed the alleged involvement with her.
He dismissed his half-sister’s post as “hearsay evidence from a tweet.”
Those circumstances matter. A family member’s political activity decades before El-Sayed’s birth would not establish his own membership, beliefs or divided allegiance.
But they also explain why reporters are asking a narrower factual question: Was his mother involved with the organization, as his half-sister publicly claimed?
El-Sayed says he doesn’t know of such involvement and has no personal connection to the Muslim Brotherhood.
His argument is that his faith and ancestry should not be grounds for questioning his loyalty to the United States.
DBS WIRE SOURCES (I’ve got all day).
- Mediaite — El-Sayed compares himself to JFK during MS NOW interview
- Mediaite — Mike Rogers challenges El-Sayed’s earlier denial of family connections
- Washington Post — El-Sayed responds to his half-sister’s posts
- Fox News — NBC interview presses El-Sayed on reported family ties
