Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed said his fellow Democrats need to “win by massive numbers” in the upcoming midterm elections so the result “is unquestionable.”
“Donald Trump has already threatened to do what he did in 2020, which is deny the outcomes of an election,” El-Sayed told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” in an interview that aired Sunday.
Asked by NBC News on Saturday whether he would accept the results of the midterm elections no matter who wins, Trump said, “Of course I will. But we don’t want cheating.”
El-Sayed’s Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers, has also denied 2020 election results, El-Sayed told moderator Kristen Welker. “The guy I’m running against, he insinuates that he didn’t actually lose in 2020,” he said. “He talks about this mythical van that showed up in Detroit with a bunch of votes, as if he didn’t lose.”
Asked by Welker about whether he thinks Trump and Rogers would call his race into question if the results are close, El-Sayed said, “I am concerned that Donald Trump and Mike Rogers are not committed to the institution of our democracy.”
After Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, Trump targeted Michigan with election fraud claims that were eventually shot down by a judge, who called them “nothing but speculation and conjecture.”
Michigan was also among a handful of states where Trump supporters in 2020 sought to submit a slate of so-called fake electors to the Electoral College to falsely declare that Trump won. Fifteen people were charged in the alleged scheme, but their cases were later dismissed.
Earlier this year, in a series of escalating inquiries about the state’s voter rolls, the Trump administration demanded that Wayne County, home to Detroit, give the federal government all of its ballots from the 2024 presidential election.
In the “Meet the Press interview,” which was taped on Friday, El-Sayed said he’s confident he can win over former Trump voters with his campaign’s economic focus. That includes making healthcare more accessible through “Medicare for All” and fighting corporate interests.
“Everywhere I go, I get somebody who comes up and says, ‘Look, I voted for Trump two, three times, and I’m voting for you.’ And I ask why. They say, ‘It’s because you really want me to have healthcare.’ I really want them to have healthcare. ‘It’s because you really are America first.’ I really am America first,” said El-Sayed, a former public health official.
He also hopes those economic messages resonate with Jewish voters who may otherwise be skeptical of him because of his criticism of Israel and his rhetoric.
“The things that unite us are so much bigger than the things that divide us, so much bigger. We believe in religious pluralism. We believe in the separation of church and state. We believe that more people deserve healthcare. We believe in reproductive rights. We believe that Donald Trump is an existential threat on our democracy. We believe that corporations shouldn’t be able to buy politicians,” he said.
El-Sayed again expressed regret about his initial reaction to a March vehicle-ramming attack on a synagogue near Detroit. He condemned the attack at the time but added that “hurt people hurt people,” noting that some of the attacker’s family members had died days earlier in airstrikes in Lebanon.
“If I step on somebody’s grief, of course I regret that. And I really wish I’d thought about how somebody would have felt hearing that and thought twice about making those comments,” El-Sayed told Welker.
“My commitment to Jewish safety is the same as my commitment to my own kids,” he added. “And we need to be able to know that we can go to our schools, that we can go to our places of worship, and that nobody is going to attack.”
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which supports pro-Israel candidates from both parties, targeted El-Sayed’s initial comments on the attack in mailers sent to voters this week.
A super PAC called “Together for Michigan” also began airing ads this week centered on the remarks. In one ad, a woman says her son was in the synagogue on the day of the attack, telling viewers that El-Sayed “gave an excuse to someone who wanted to murder children. I’m a lifelong Democrat, but this election, I’m voting for Mike Rogers.”
With the final push to the midterms underway, Welker asked El-Sayed about his plans to campaign with former President Barack Obama. In a 2012 HuffPost opinion piece, El-Sayed wrote that “Obama was not the right choice. He just wasn’t the wrong one. This leader has perpetrated war, violated our civil liberties, deported more people from our shores than any other president before him, and the list of his failures goes on.”
On Friday, El-Sayed said that time has changed his perspective on Obama.
“I think about eight years of President Obama’s leadership and you compare that to the 12 years we’ve lived since. You look back and say, ‘Man, that was a really capable leader, who led with a kind of belief in people and uncommon grace, even for people who disagreed with him,’” El-Sayed said.
He added that he considers Obama a “mentor” and that great mentors “let you grow up.”
