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Conservative outlets recently dug up and republished a string of deleted social‑media posts attributed to Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El‑Sayed that compare the Sept. 11 attacks and America’s response to later wars and pandemics. The screenshots, first published by the Washington Free Beacon and later summarized by mainstream outlets including CBS News, have put El‑Sayed on the defensive — and given Republicans something sharp to wave around in the Michigan Senate race.
What the archived posts show
Key lines that resurfaced
The material reported by the Washington Free Beacon includes posts from roughly 2020–2022 in which El‑Sayed allegedly draws equivalences between 9/11 casualties and later losses tied to U.S. wars. One archived post quoted by multiple outlets reads in part, “Today, I mourn the 3K lives, 6K injuries, & infrastructural devastation in NYC, perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my faith. Tomorrow, I’ll mourn ~1M lives, millions of injuries, & infrastructural devastation in 3 countries, perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my country.” The resurfaced posts also thread in COVID analogies and criticisms of the post‑9/11 security state. The candidate’s account has since deleted those entries, which is exactly how these things end up: scrubbed, archived, and then splashed across the feed right when voters are paying attention.
Campaign response and timing
El‑Sayed’s campaign told reporters it scrubbed posts older than July 2023 “to prevent any old posts from being taken out of context,” and the candidate has said to CBS that “9/11 was an awful thing” while also questioning whether subsequent wars made America safer. That explanation might soothe a friendly newsroom, but timing matters. The resurfacing comes near the 25th anniversary of 9/11, and voters will want a straight answer: were these policy critiques or a tone‑deaf comparison that minimizes the worst terror attack on our soil? Saying “context” while removing the context is a convenient way to dodge accountability.
Political fallout and why voters should care
This isn’t a parlor debate. Michigan is a battleground Senate contest, and narratives stick. Political observers quoted in coverage warn that a single deleted tweet rarely sinks a statewide race, but a pattern of resurfaced material — ties to controversial online figures like streamer Hasan Piker, past praise for progressive policies such as the Green New Deal, and now these 9/11 comparisons — can shape voter impressions. Jewish and veteran communities in Michigan will watch closely. Republicans will use these posts in ads and town halls; Democrats will argue smears. Voters deserve clarity, not a press release that says “we deleted it” and calls that closure.
Media spin and the last word
There’s also been a fight about how newsrooms handled the story. Some on the left accused mainstream coverage of singling out El‑Sayed in ways they called biased or Islamophobic; conservatives say this is basic vetting of a major‑party nominee. Fine — debate that — but the core fact remains: archived posts exist, they were reported by the Washington Free Beacon, and CBS compiled and published the resurfacing. The candidate owes voters a plain, unvarnished explanation about what he meant and why he chose to delete the posts. Michigan voters shouldn’t accept scrubbed history as an answer. If you want to run for the U.S. Senate, be prepared to defend every online line you’ve ever written — or don’t be surprised when the internet does it for you.
