Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed is heading into the 25th anniversary of 9/11 with words from the 20th anniversary following him into his campaign as Michigan’s Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate.
In a since-deleted September 11, 2021, post, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed mourned the nearly 3,000 people murdered and thousands injured in the attacks.
From CBS News:
Meanwhile, El-Sayed’s past references to the deadly attacks have continued to surface, including two deleted social media posts verified by CBS News that have not been previously reported. In those posts, he calls for the American public to muster the same outrage for the COVID-19 death toll that they displayed after 9/11.
In one, from April 2020, El-Sayed compared the nearly 3,000 Americans killed on Sept. 11 to the mounting COVID-19 death toll and argued for a response commensurate with the nation’s post-9/11 mobilization. In another, El-Sayed wrote that because more Americans had died from COVID than in the Sept. 11 attacks, he hoped “that means we’ll spend the next ten years fighting a war for public health & against poverty … like we launched a global #WaronTerror after 9/11. We could save lives rather than take them.”
“Abdul has always unequivocally condemned terrorism and the September 11 attacks,” a spokesperson for El-Sayed’s campaign said in a statement to CBS News. “Mike Rogers’ attempts to misrepresent Abdul’s beliefs are bad-faith lies meant to mislead Michiganders.”
Then he said he would spend the following day mourning roughly 1 million lives lost in three countries through wars carried out “in the name of my country.” His campaign says he has always unequivocally condemned terrorism and the September 11 attacks.
Americans can argue for another 25 years about Afghanistan, Iraq, surveillance, and every decision Washington made after the towers fell. Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed chose September 11 itself to pair the slaughter of Americans with an indictment of America’s response.
Even remembrance came with a political footnote.
His continuing relationship with Hasan Piker makes the episode harder to brush aside. The influential left-wing streamer campaigned alongside Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed and infamously said in 2019 that “America deserved 9/11.”
Piker later retracted it, and Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed has called the remark “dumb,” while resisting demands that he sever ties with Piker.
Some Democrats have apparently found their backbone, or at least are faking it until they make it. House Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) recently called other remarks by Piker about American Jews “dangerous, malicious, and antisemitic” and said such language shouldn’t be tolerated in the public square.
And as we’ve repeatedly indicated as House Democrats, from the beginning of this Congress, we’re committed to pushing back against the extremism that has been unleashed on the American people every day, every week, every month, year after year, until we can end this national nightmare. At the same period of time, of course, we have a responsibility to solve problems, and sometimes that means meeting with people on the other side of the aisle to figure out what the opportunities will be in order to address the things that the American people definitively want us to address, which from our standpoint is the reality that the cost of living in this country is way too high. Far too many people are working hard, they’re playing by the rules, they can’t thrive and they can barely survive. That’s not an acceptable situation, and we’ve got to address that affordability crisis, which is not a hoax. It’s very real. I hear about it every day here in Brooklyn and across the country, and we’re determined to do something about it.
…
what I’m suggesting is that if folks have been shortchanging the American people, screwing over the American people or stealing from the American people, yes, our commitment very publicly is that we’re going to hold the crooks accountable. We’re going to follow the facts, we’re going to apply the law and we’re going to be guided by the Constitution. Now, that work is going to be led by Jamie Raskin and House Committee Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, as well as Robert Garcia, who’s also doing a tremendous job, and Democrats on the Oversight Committee. But let’s be clear about something. Our commitment to the American people has been we’re going to fight to make life more affordable. We recognize that the cost of living is out of control and we need to lower the cost of groceries, lower the cost of gas, lower the cost of housing. We’re also going to fight to make healthcare affordable for every single American because we recognize that, in this great country, access to high-quality, affordable healthcare can’t simply be a privilege available only to the wealthy, the well-off and the well-connected. It’s got to be a right available to everyone. That’s a principle that unites Democrats all across the ideological spectrum.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), now deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, offers an older example. At a 2019 CAIR gathering, Omar said the organization formed after 9/11 because “some people did something” and Muslims began losing civil liberties.
CAIR was actually founded in 1994.
Her full speech focused on anti-Muslim discrimination and civil liberties. The context tells us what she was discussing. It doesn’t erase her astonishing choice of words for the murder of 2,977 people committed by 19 al-Qaeda terrorists.
Months later, Omar marked the anniversary by declaring September 11 “an attack on all of us” and promising, “We will never forget.”
From CBS News:
Nicholas Haros Jr., after speaking the name of his mother, Frances Haros, addressed the Minnesota congresswoman. He was wearing a shirt that bore a controversial statement the Democratic lawmaker said in March in reference to 9/11: “Some people did something.”
Over the spring, a video clip of Omar saying that drew criticism from her political opponents. President Donald Trump even retweeted a clip of her saying those words spliced with video of planes crashing into the twin towers.
Omar said the words at an event for the Council on American-Islamic Relations while remarking on how Muslims in America saw their civil liberties infringed upon in the wake of 9/11. Her defenders said her words were taken out of context.
Still, some saw Omar’s choice of words as flippant.
“Objectively speaking, we know who and what was done,” Haros said during the ceremony at the 9/11 Memorial, addressing Omar. “There is no uncertainty about that. Why your confusion?”
He continued: “On that day, 19 Islamic terrorists of Al-Qaeda killed more than 3,000 people and caused billions of dollars in economic damage. Is that clear?”
At the end of his time, Haros asked Omar and other members of the progressive group of female lawmakers of color known as “the squad” to show respect for the victims.
“Show respect in honoring them, please,” he said. “American patriotism and your position demand it.”
There lies the problem. Yet it’s with ceremonial patriotism.
“Never forget” carries little weight when public figures spend the rest of the year softening the language, attaching political qualifications, or remaining close to people whose words deserve condemnation.
The stakes grow larger every year. The National September 11 Memorial & Museum estimates that 100 million Americans are now too young to remember the attacks. About one-third of the country knows 9/11 only as history.
They’ll inherit whatever version we leave them.
Over the next several days, this series will remember the dead, the first responders still paying physically for their courage, the decisions America made afterward, the unfinished pursuit of justice, and the people trying to reshape the meaning of September 11 for a generation that never saw the smoke.
Twenty-five years later, “Never Forget” requires more than saying the right words once a year.
It requires remembering what happened, who did it, and why.
Twenty-five years after 9/11, remembering the truth matters more than ever, especially as a new generation learns about a day it never witnessed. PJ Media VIP lets us keep telling these stories without sanding off the uncomfortable parts. Join today and save 60% with promo code FIGHT.
