Washington Examiner columnist Joe Concha torched Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul el Sayed over his recent debate performance, calling it a “very, very bad night,” predicting Republican nominee Mike Rogers could flip the state.
“I don’t see how Mike Rogers loses this. It will be close, but I think Michigan flips,” Concha said on Fox Business’s The Evening Edit on Thursday.
Questions surrounding el Sayed’s alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and his status as a physician were brought up during Wednesday night’s debate.
Concha called el Sayed a “child” who “didn’t seem to have any answers” after Rogers “hammered home” that el Sayed keeps calling himself a physician but does not have a medical license.
Medical licensing records in both Michigan and New York do not indicate el Sayed ever held a physician’s license in either state, according to a May report from Politico.
“He keeps portraying himself as a doctor because he wants to also portray himself as an expert on healthcare,” Concha said.
Concha argued that el Sayed’s push for government-run healthcare is going to cost trillions, and “that means taxes on everyone.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) received a list from Democrats in September of healthcare priorities for the party, which included a policy stance called “Medicare for all,” if they flip the House in November.
“Medicare for all” means “you lose your private health insurance and the quality of healthcare, obviously, goes down,” Concha said. El Sayed has said in his campaign that he would not force people off their private health insurance if they wanted to keep it, though critics are skeptical of that claim.
Concha also highlighted el Sayed’s alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Past social media posts from el Sayed’s half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, expressed support for the organization, which led the press to question el Sayed on any affiliations after previously denying ties to the group. The U.S. has designated some branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations.
“Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college. #respect,” Abdelhadi wrote in 2012.
El Sayed denied any connections to the Muslim Brotherhood during an Oct. 11 interview with NBC News’s Meet the Press host Kristen Welker.
He also told NBC Nightly News journalist Tom Llamas, on Oct. 14, that he has “no ties” to the group, after first deflecting Llamas’s question and challenging its relevancy.
A Wednesday report from the New York Times revealed el Sayed signed a letter in 2012 urging Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president to “purge the media and police.”
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Concha argued the New York Times publishing this information is noteworthy because the paper is “not exactly a bastion of conservative sentiment.”
“This could be definitely a game-changer in Michigan,” Concha said.