Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul el Sayed addressed the attention he received at last week’s Republican midterm elections convention on Sunday.
While speaking with CBS News’s Weijia Jiang of Face the Nation, the socialist Senate candidate said President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and other speakers who mentioned him at the first-of-its-kind convention in Dallas didn’t address the real issues voters are facing.
El Sayed countered a talking point that has been repeated often by GOP figures such as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson — that socialist Democrats such as el Sayed have “let the barbarians inside the gate” by promoting a shift from capitalism toward communism. El Sayed and other socialists, such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, have become central figures ahead of the midterm elections, both due to their views on economic policies and their proximity to internet personality Hasan Piker, who has said America deserved the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a statement he has since walked back.
“Well, I’ll tell you this,” el Sayed said after Jiang played a clip of Johnson saying centrist Democrats who appease the party’s socialist members are the true “dangerous part” of Mamdani and el Sayed’s influence. “The barbarian is in the White House, and we’re seeing the consequences of that right now. You know what was not a subject at all of the RNC? The gas prices, grocery prices, these ridiculous tariffs, and this war with Canada that’s raising our prices an average of $5,600 a year for the average Michigan family. The war in Iran — didn’t want to talk about any of it. The fact that you can’t see a doctor in the United States. So, they’re going to point at me. They’re going to talk about me. They’re going to point to my name.”
Jiang asked el Sayed about his relationship with Piker, noting Rogers has joked that the antisemitic streamer is el Sayed’s running mate.
“I’m actually running to represent the people in my state, which is why while he was in Dallas saying that, I was in Detroit. Dallas is not in Michigan. I’m sure he won all of the Michigan votes in Dallas. Now the only reason he went to Dallas is because he cannot break with the president, and when the president tells him to jump, he’s going to say, ‘how high?’”
HERE’S WHAT THEY DIDN’T SAY AT THE REPUBLICAN MIDTERM CONVENTION
The mid-week convention was held by Republicans to drum up support for GOP candidates ahead of November’s midterm elections. The race between el Sayed and Rogers has become a primary focus ahead of November, as has that between Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his Democratic opponent, state representative James Talarico.
The convention was held the same week as the one-year anniversary of the assassination of conservative figure Charlie Kirk and the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The GOP knocked Democrats for accepting the likes of Piker, Mamdani, and el Sayed into the party following its loss to Trump in the 2024 presidential election.