Washington Examiner columnist Guy Benson slammed Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul el Sayed for his debate performance, giving “non-answers” and saying “nothing bad about Iran.”
El Sayed and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) were asked questions related to the Israel-Iran conflict during the debate on Thursday.
“Who do you think’s the bigger threat to the United States: Israel or Iran?” WOOD TV8 moderator Rick Albin asked el Sayed.
“I’m just going to say that that’s a ridiculous hypothetical,” el Sayed said.
“I’m not sure he knows what a hypothetical question is because we face real threats in this country,” Benson said on Fox News’s Hannity Thursday.
“It is, in some ways, a ridiculous question, because it shouldn’t even be difficult at all to answer,” Benson continued.
El Sayed has faced controversy over his refusal to denounce the Iranian regime. He visited the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on Sept. 30, when a student pressed him about the Iranian regime and its violence.
“You say that you didn’t want to comment on Supreme Leader Khamenei’s death and that people in Dearborn were sad when he died,” the student said.
Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed during a joint U.S. and Israeli airstrike in February.
“That silence had a gaping hole in our community,” the student continued. “I want to ask if you regret that silence,” the student said, followed by a lengthy response from el Sayed saying, “We have turned ourselves into the world’s policemen.”
The student called out el Sayed for not answering the question.
El Sayed has also been known to associate himself with left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, who made controversial comments about Jews, and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, saying Americans “deserved” it.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) addressed concerns about Piker’s comments on the streaming platform Twitch in a letter to Congress on Oct. 29, 2024.
The letter reads, “Mr. Piker has demonized Orthodox Jews as ‘inbred.’”
“Here is Mr. Piker in his own words: ‘America deserved 9/11.’ The 3,000 Americans incinerated or otherwise murdered in the Twin Towers; the falling men and women plummeting to their deaths from 110-story skyscrapers; according to Mr. Piker, all of them had it coming. They deserved it,” Torres said.
Piker addressed his comments about 9/11 on an episode of the podcast Pod Save America, arguing they were “taken out of context.”
Twitch CEO Dan Clancy addressed concerns of how the streaming platform handles hate in a blog post on Nov. 1, 2024.
“Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen members of the community voice concerns about how we handle potentially harmful content. There is no place on Twitch for racism, hatred, or harassment of any kind, including antisemitism and Islamophobia,” Clancy said.
El Sayed has previously campaigned with Piker, but is seemingly distancing himself from the streamer over increased backlash from Democrats about Piker’s antisemitic views.
El Sayed was given multiple times to answer the question about Iran and Israel during the debate. Benson emphasized that the answer should be obvious.
“On one hand, we have the ‘death of America’ regime that’s been killing Americans and targeting us for almost 50 years,” Benson said. “On the other hand, we have an ally, a democracy, that shares intelligence and hunts down and kills our mutual enemies.”
Benson called out el Sayed for side-stepping the issue, only because taking a stance would mean potentially losing votes.
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“He gives long, non-answers where he says nothing bad about Iran, many bad things about Israel, and then calls the whole thing ‘hypothetical’ so he doesn’t actually have to say what he truly believes because that would not fly with most Michiganders. And if he lied about what he truly believes, that would not fly with a core, core crucial part of his base,” Benson said.
The general election will be held on Nov. 3.