Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic senator-elect from Michigan, leaned into accusations of acting cocky on the path to victory over Republican candidate Mike Rogers, citing a need to push back on President Donald Trump’s manner of communication during an appearance on Pod Save America.
“Long ago, you predicted that you would win this race by seven points, which at the time seemed like a pretty cocky and ill-considered thing to say. Then you won the race by seven points. People are still calling you cocky,” podcast host Jon Favreau said during his interview with El-Sayed.
“How do you see yourself?”
“I think there is a responsibility that we have to engage with [Trump] as the unserious fool that he is,” El-Sayed replied.
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El-Sayed’s response sheds light on his view of his own campaign and the tone that he believes Democrats need to adopt to counter Trump’s presence in American politics. It also raises questions of whether El-Sayed’s campaign strategies will yield results in Congress.
In his view, Trump has changed the style of acceptable communication. In turn, he accused Democrats of being hesitant to abandon a kind of decorum to fight fire with fire.
“I just think there’s a responsibility for us to walk out of ‘The West Wing’ episode that our politics used to feel like and into the reality of where we are,” El-Sayed said, referring to a a television drama known for its idealistic portrayal of American politics.
“I say that because if you’ve ever watched a bully in a room, if you don’t stand up to the bully, it’s not like the bully will just go away. The bully just gets stronger,” El-Sayed said.
During his campaign, El-Sayed repeatedly pointed a finger at Trump for, in his view, ushering in a new age of political rhetoric. But that view also preceded his Senate bid.
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He once accused President Donald Trump of inciting terrorism in a 2020 interview, citing a foiled plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
“These are terrorists; we have to call them that. We have to recognize that that is what the face of terrorism looks like right now. We have to step up against it,” El-Sayed said.
“We gotta ask: why are these people getting radicalized? Well, there must be some radical, extremist cleric out there who may be tweeting up a storm about all the things that they think need to be done, like liberating Michigan.”
Although President Donald Trump did not call for any kind of violence against Whitmer, El-Sayed said he believed the president was at least partially responsible, pointing to a tweet Trump had made six months before the discovered plot.
“LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” Trump wrote in a post on Twitter, the social media platform now known as X. The post was one of a series calling to “liberate” Virginia and Minnesota from COVID-19 restrictions imposed by Democratic governors.
According to FBI comments to local media, the plot originated before Trump’s post.
Even so, El-Sayed called the posts emblematic of a cultural toxicity that had made violence more likely.
“The idea that people would threaten her safety because she was willing to stand up to keep us all healthy is, to me, the example of what the kind of toxicity that we see out of Donald Trump creates,” El-Sayed said.
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A spokesperson for El-Sayed did not immediately respond to requests for comment on whether he believed in a red line for what kind of rhetoric Democrats should refrain from using.
Having won his U.S. Senate election, El-Sayed will be sworn into office on Jan. 3, 2027, the start of the 120th Congress.