CBS framed Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed as the victim of the 9/11 attacks, sparking sharp pushback over media bias and political accountability.
The media deserves criticism when it prioritizes narrative over context, and CBS’s recent piece on Abdul El-Sayed is a clear example. With the 25th anniversary of September 11 approaching, the network treated El-Sayed as if he were the injured party rather than the subject of scrutiny. That framing downplays real victims and elevates political theater. Conservatives see this as another instance of the press shielding Democrats from hard questions.
CBS presented El-Sayed as part of a new left-wing crop that opposed American wars and tapped into anger over anti-Arab sentiment in Michigan’s active Muslim community. The story suggested he’s now trying to soften or remove past remarks that could hurt him with general election voters. That’s not sympathy; that’s damage control. From a Republican perspective, the concern is how media outlets normalize past statements instead of holding candidates to account.
Here’s more:
El-Sayed is a leader of a new crop of candidates from a wing of his party that opposed American wars and capitalized on anger over anti-Arab sentiment in a state with a robust and active Muslim community. But now he is attempting to adapt — and in some cases delete — past statements that may run afoul of a broad, general election audience.
https://x.com/CBSNews/status/2094399335748215195
As El-Sayed heads into the fall general election campaign against Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, El-Sayed, a former public health official, has already been forced to distance himself from the views of Hasan Piker, a popular Twitch streamer who has appeared at El-Sayed’s campaign events and who generated controversy for declaring that “America deserved 9/11” before later retracting the remark.
Meanwhile, El-Sayed’s past references to the deadly attacks have continued to surface, including two deleted social media posts verified by CBS News that have not been previously reported. In those posts, he calls for the American public to muster the same outrage for the COVID-19 death toll that they displayed after 9/11.
In one, from April 2020, El-Sayed compared the nearly 3,000 Americans killed on Sept. 11 to the mounting COVID-19 death toll and argued for a response commensurate with the nation’s post-9/11 mobilization. In another, El-Sayed wrote that because more Americans had died from COVID than in the Sept. 11 attacks, he hoped “that means we’ll spend the next ten years fighting a war for public health & against poverty … like we launched a global #WaronTerror after 9/11. We could save lives rather than take them.”
Those quoted paragraphs are revealing, and they deserve scrutiny. Comparing the nearly 3,000 victims of 9/11 to COVID in a call for a “war for public health” is a provocative rhetorical move. It’s fair political debate to question whether that comparison respects the memory of those killed in the attacks. Republicans will argue that such language shows poor judgment and bad instincts for someone seeking high office.
Hasan Piker’s remark that “America deserved 9/11,” which he later retracted, became a flashpoint because of his association with El-Sayed’s campaign events. El-Sayed distanced himself from Piker, but the connection raised legitimate questions about judgment and associations. Voters want to know who a candidate surrounds himself with and what those ties say about his worldview. Political accountability means examining both words and networks.
El-Sayed also commented on a Michigan synagogue attack with the phrase “Hurt people hurt people,” which many found inadequate given the severity of the event. A Hezbollah-linked attacker reportedly drove a car toward the synagogue intending to harm Jewish children, an attack that targets innocent lives and religious freedom. Calling complex violence a mere expression of hurt overlooks the ideological hatred that motivates some terrorist acts and risks minimizing victims’ suffering.
The campaign’s attempts to walk back or delete past posts are normal politics, but the press should not present that as a reason to recast the candidate as a victim. Media outlets have a duty to cover context and consequences, not create narrative shields. From a conservative standpoint, this is part of a larger pattern where media empathy is directed toward favored political figures.
Left-leaning commentators who claim the coverage fuels Islamophobia are missing the point that critique and accountability are different from blanket bigotry. Holding a candidate responsible for statements or associations is democratic oversight, not discrimination. Republicans argue it’s possible to criticize policy positions and past rhetoric without attacking a community’s faith.
CBS’s approach here reads as defensive for a Democrat rather than investigative journalism. That matters because voters rely on the press to separate legitimate questions from partisan spin. When networks frame stories to soften political blows, they erode trust and distort the choices facing the electorate. The bottom line for conservatives is simple: media should report, not spin.
Democrats do not like being held accountable, and the media tropes that protect them make that obvious. September 11 was a singular act of terror carried out by jihadists who targeted America, and comparing it casually to other tragedies is understandably controversial. Saying El-Sayed is the victim here misreads the situation; the focus should remain on victims, facts, and the candidate’s record, not sympathetic narratives from sympathetic outlets.
