A Michigan Senate candidate cut off a Fox News anchor so many times that the anchor never reached the end of his question about the Muslim Brotherhood.
Abdul El-Sayed, 41, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, repeatedly interrupted Fox News anchor Bret Baier during an on-the-street interview in Detroit that aired Friday, Oct. 23, 2026, on “Special Report,” refusing to let him finish a question about the Islamist movement, an allegation pushed by his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, 63.
“Be a Journalist,” He Told Baier
Baier opened the interview by telling the candidate, “Mike Rogers has been really hitting this Muslim Brotherhood thing,” and got as far as El-Sayed’s family before the candidate stopped him.
El-Sayed said the purpose of the question was to raise whether he holds dual loyalty. His loyalty is to the U.S. Constitution, he said — the same oath every senator has taken.
Baier was trying to ask about a 2012 open letter El-Sayed signed concerning Egypt’s then-president Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader. El-Sayed interrupted again with “I’m not interested,” and the anchor pushed on whether he wanted to walk the letter back. The candidate accused Baier of yanking the letter out of context and acting like an arm of the Rogers campaign, then told him to “be a journalist.” Baier shot back that he was one.
El-Sayed insisted he had never belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood and never would. He said Rogers wants to make his faith the issue, which he called “sad and beneath” Rogers and beneath the president of the United States, because the Constitution guarantees the right to pray as one chooses.
Joe Scarborough praised the exchange on MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” on Monday, Oct. 26: “I got to say, good for him also, when Bret (Baier) was coming after him again, just trying to parrot all of the hate — hate attacks from the Rogers campaign, saying, ‘Don’t — don’t — don’t be a Rogers campaign person, be a journalist.’”
Cruz Floats an Intelligence Committee Seat
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, campaigned with Rogers in Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich., and told reporters Wednesday, Oct. 28: “I don’t know about dual loyalties. The demonstrated loyalties he has are to the Muslim Brotherhood.” Raising the prospect of El-Sayed sitting on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Cruz said that “if I am correct that he is a passionate supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, there is a very real risk that Americans will die as a result.”
El-Sayed campaign spokesman Cole Wozniak answered that “Ted Cruz is a deeply unpopular politician who has long supported policies that hurt Michigan families.” He added, “His dangerous comments are just the latest example of Mike Rogers and his MAGA allies attempting to distract voters.”
Rogers, hosting Cruz, said of himself, “I want to represent Michigan,” while El-Sayed “wants to represent Palestine.” He called the contest “the most important race in the country.” At the Oct. 21 Senate debate in Southfield, Mich., Rogers repeated his claim that El-Sayed has never disavowed the group, and President Donald Trump has publicly linked the candidate to the Brotherhood. The Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned Rogers’ tactics and Trump’s calling El-Sayed a “vicious violent jihadist” as Islamophobic.
Posts From an Estranged Half-Sister
The allegations come from social media posts by Eman Abdelhadi, El-Sayed’s estranged half-sister, who wrote that the family was long part of the Muslim Brotherhood and that her mother was active with the group in the 1970s. El-Sayed’s parents separated when he was three, and he was not raised with his mother or his half-sister. Recent reporting has found no evidence of his affiliation with the organization.
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928, and its offshoots range from non-violent political factions to extremist groups like Hamas. In January, the U.S. designated the Brotherhood’s Egyptian, Lebanese and Jordanian branches as terrorist organizations, citing among other things the Egyptian branch’s support in justifying terrorism carried out by Hamas. Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum asked El-Sayed on Oct. 5 whether he backed terrorist designations for Brotherhood organizations in Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan. He said he supports a designation for any group engaged in or committed to political violence, and asked to be shown that the Brotherhood is.
New photographs circulated on social media Oct. 28, shared by Government Accountability Institute president Peter Schweizer. The post says they show El-Sayed at a private retreat in Colombia in 2022 alongside figures from organizations it describes as having credible ties to the Muslim Brotherhood or Islamic terror groups.
The Heckler Called Tommy
Footage of a young man called “Tommy” demanding that El-Sayed disavow the Brotherhood went viral. He was later identified as Thomas Teepell, who has worked for Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley and for a Kansas Republican who lost a run for governor.
At an Oct. 17 town hall in Caro, Mich., a questioner asked, “Will you disavow the Muslim Brotherhood?” El-Sayed answered, “Sure. Yeah, absolutely,” then turned and questioned the man in a five-minute video he posted himself. In that exchange he told the man, “I’m running for the U.S. Senate and happen to be Muslim.” A Newsmax reporter asked him again on Oct. 20 whether he had done enough. “I’m going to ask you to watch that clip a lot more times. I clearly disavowed it… If it’s not clear enough, I clearly disavow it. Are we good?” he said.
El-Sayed and Rogers are competing for the seat of retiring Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich. El-Sayed emerged from a bruising Democratic primary and now leads in recent polling; a WDIV-TV/Detroit News survey released Tuesday, Oct. 27, put him ahead 51.4 percent to 45.1 percent. Former President Barack Obama campaigned for him in Detroit on Saturday, Oct. 24, a day after the interview aired. The questions are not new: at a Michigan gubernatorial forum in May 2018, Republican rival Patrick Colbeck raised Sharia law and El-Sayed’s involvement with the Muslim Students Association at the University of Michigan.
