Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed compared President Donald Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot to Osama bin Laden’s role in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in a 2021 blog post that argued America has an obligation to hold the president accountable and "send the same message" it did after 9/11.
The post, which appeared on a blog El-Sayed has since made private, is titled "Why aren't we treating Donald Trump like we treat other terrorists?" El-Sayed argued that racism explained what he described as a double standard in how the country responded to the terrorists behind 9/11 and Trump and his supporters after Jan. 6.
"I was a junior in high school 20 years ago when I watched the second plane hit the Twin Towers from my chemistry classroom," he wrote in 2021.
".... Then nearly 20 years later, on January 6th, 2021, I watched terrorists attack the symbol of my country and the Democracy my parents came here to partake in decades ago. And 36 year-old me was taken back to the pain of that high school chemistry classroom," he continued.
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He went on to say that Trump "recruited, radicalized and reassured" the Jan. 6 rioters in the same way bin Laden "recruited, radicalized and reassured" the "nineteen hijackers who attacked our country on 9/11."
He also described Trump’s conduct as "terrorism," arguing that lawmakers had both a constitutional and "moral" obligation to convict him and bar him from seeking office again.
"So, yes, Donald Trump deserved his impeachment just like he deserves to be convicted and removed from the right to ever run for office again. Of course. Every single member of Congress who believes in an America true to the ideals we claim for her has a constitutional—a moral—obligation to hold Donald Trump accountable for his terrorism," El-Sayed wrote.
On May 1, 2011, a team of U.S. Navy SEALs shot and killed bin Laden during an early morning raid in Pakistan.
"Holding Osama bin Laden accountable is something we got right," El-Sayed wrote in his blog post. "It sent a message—attacking our country comes at a cost."
Campaign spokeswoman Roxie Richner pushed back on any suggestion that El-Sayed was calling for Trump to face the death penalty over Jan. 6, saying he was advocating legal accountability.
"That’s an absurd and false interpretation of what he said," Richner told Fox News Digital. "Abdul believes no one is above the law and that includes the president."
"As Abdul said: He believes that if anyone attacks American democracy, they must be held accountable," Richner said.
El-Sayed's past statements and current associations came under a microscope during his contentious primary battle with Rep. Haley Stevens. For instance, he drew considerable backlash for campaigning with streamer Hasan Piker, who once said that "America deserved 9/11."
El-Sayed has disavowed Piker’s notorious remark, but he has declined to renounce Piker himself, framing pressure to do so as "cancel culture." With El-Sayed now the Democratic nominee, Republicans are seizing on his controversies in attack ads as GOP-aligned groups pour millions into the Michigan Senate race.
Referring to Trump and Jan. 6, El-Sayed stated that "we have to send the same message we did after 9/11: If you attack our democracy, we will hold you accountable."
El-Sayed also accused lawmakers who opposed conviction of engaging in "hypocrisy rooted in racism" and said Trump and those who helped him deserved to be held accountable "for their crimes to the fullest extent of the law."
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Critics have accused El-Sayed of attempting to mislead voters by scrubbing large quantities of his content off the internet before launching his 2026 Senate bid, including YouTube videos where he floated replacing the Second Amendment and railed against 4th of July fireworks.