On 9/11's 25th Anniversary, Abdul El-Sayed's Schedule Made Room for a Festival.
It Didn't Make Room for a 9/11 Remembrance.
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, had a public campaign schedule for September 11, 2026 — the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks — that listed Fiesta Mexicana, a Grand Rapids festival, a farmers market, and the Allegan County Fair. It did not list a 9/11 remembrance event. Fox News flagged the gap on September 4, days before the anniversary.
A campaign spokeswoman told Fox News that El-Sayed “will be attending a 9/11 remembrance memorial event” that simply wasn't on the public schedule, and said he would skip two of the four flagged events — without saying which two.
The scheduling dispute would be a minor story on its own. It isn't landing on its own. It's landing on top of five months of deleted posts, a synagogue-attack response a fellow Michigan Democrat called excuse-making, a Senate primary won the same day El-Sayed called Israel “bloodthirsty,” and a public break with a livestreamer whose remarks about Jewish Americans drew condemnation from his own party's leadership.
- Sept. 11, 2026 — the 25th anniversary date on which El-Sayed's public schedule listed Fiesta Mexicana, a farmers market, and the Allegan County Fair, with no remembrance event · Source: Fox News
- 2 of 4 — flagged Sept. 11 events his campaign said he would skip, without specifying which two · Source: Fox News
- $30M+ — spent by AIPAC's political operation backing primary opponent Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) · Source: Jewish Democratic Council of America
- Aug. 20, 2026 — date of Hasan Piker's Twitch remarks about Jewish Americans, condemned by Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) · Source: JTA
- Aug. 29, 2026 — date El-Sayed apologized to the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus for his “hurt people hurt people” remark · Source: Daily Wire
The public-facing schedule matters because of what the anniversary is, and because of who's running. El-Sayed is the Democratic nominee competing for Michigan's open U.S. Senate seat this fall, a race both parties are spending heavily to win. According to Fox News's review of his publicly posted schedule for Sept. 11, 2026, the day included a stop at Fiesta Mexicana, a festival in Grand Rapids; a farmers market; and the Allegan County Fair. No remembrance ceremony, moment of silence, or memorial event appeared anywhere on the public itinerary for the 25th anniversary of an attack that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.
Asked about the omission, a campaign spokeswoman told Fox News that El-Sayed “will be attending a 9/11 remembrance memorial event” — one not listed on the schedule made public. She also said he would skip two of the four flagged events that day, without identifying which two, leaving unclear exactly how the candidate would split his time between a national day of mourning and a festival circuit just days before the anniversary.
CBS News reported on August 31, 2026, that El-Sayed had deleted two social media posts tied to September 11: one from April 2020 comparing COVID-19 deaths to the September 11 death toll, and another from September 11, 2021, comparing the roughly 3,000 people killed that day to an estimated one million deaths across three countries in the wars the attacks triggered. El-Sayed's campaign told CBS he has “unequivocally condemned terrorism and the September 11 attacks.”
The more serious flashpoint came five months earlier. In March 2026, a truck-and-gunfire attack struck Temple Israel in the West Bloomfield, Michigan area — an attack the FBI designated Hezbollah-inspired terrorism. In a video statement afterward, El-Sayed said the attack was indefensible, but coupled that with a line that would follow him for months. He repeated a version of it again on April 8, 2026, at a University of Michigan rally where he appeared alongside livestreamer Hasan Piker and Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA).
“Nothing justifies the heinous attack that we saw on Temple Israel ... hurt people do hurt people.”
Abdul El-Sayed, video statement, March 2026
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D), a fellow Democrat, said publicly that El-Sayed was “making excuses” for the attack. “You can't make excuses for that kind of domestic terrorism,” she said — and she boycotted the state Democratic convention over antisemitism and harassment concerns.
On August 5, 2026 — the same day he won Michigan's Democratic Senate primary — El-Sayed appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe and called Israel “so bloodthirsty under his reign,” referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
NOW: President Trump reacts to Abdul El-Sayed's victory in the Michigan Senate primary by calling it 'great news for the Republican Party.' Trump claims that El-Sayed's win signals that Democratic policies will become even more progressive.
Fifteen days later, Piker — the Twitch streamer who had appeared onstage with El-Sayed in April — said on a livestream: “If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone's going to come around and take action... not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews,” using a photo of Michigan state Sen. Jeremy Moss as his example.
This shouldn't be hard: no community should face the threat of violence for their political views. Period.
The condemnations came fast, and from El-Sayed's own party. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) called the remarks “dangerous, malicious and antisemitic.” Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI) called them “unacceptable. Full stop.” El-Sayed publicly distanced himself from Piker, saying “nobody speaks for this campaign besides me.”
The distancing came after the Jewish Democratic Council of America and others had already pressed El-Sayed to more fully denounce Piker and DSA-aligned figures around his campaign. AIPAC's political operation had spent more than $30 million backing his primary opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), who criticized El-Sayed directly for campaigning alongside someone “unapologetic about a career of making hurtful and anti-Semitic comments.”
On August 29, 2026, El-Sayed apologized in person to the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus in Lansing for the “hurt people hurt people” remark. “I made a mistake ... If my statement caused pain, I'm sorry,” he told the group.
Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers (R) wasn't satisfied. He dismissed the apology as “political theater”: “When someone says you might have been offended by what I said, that's not an apology,” Rogers said. In a separate clip, he went further, calling El-Sayed's record a pattern rather than a mistake — “Abdul El-Sayed's entire adult life has been spent spreading anti-semitism,” Rogers said. That is Rogers's own opposition-campaign characterization of his general-election opponent, not an established fact, and it goes well beyond what the documented record above shows.
President Trump (R) weighed in twice. On the day of the primary win, he posted on Truth Social that El-Sayed was a “Communist loser who hates Jews and Israel.” Three days later, he posted an image naming the candidate by his full legal name.
El-Sayed, a Communist loser who hates Jews and Israel, is the projected winner in his race with the Socialist...
Posted the day El-Sayed won Michigan's Democratic Senate primary.
A Truth Social image post captioned 'Two VERY DIFFERENT America's' names the candidate by his full legal name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed.
Paraphrased commentary · not a verbatim post
An image post rather than a text statement; described here rather than quoted verbatim.
Abdul El-Sayed (D) — Democratic nominee, U.S. Senate, Michigan.
Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) — El-Sayed's defeated primary opponent, backed by AIPAC-aligned spending.
Mike Rogers (R) — Republican nominee, El-Sayed's general-election opponent.
AG Dana Nessel (D-MI) — called El-Sayed's Temple Israel response “making excuses.”
Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) — condemned Hasan Piker's remarks about Jewish Americans.
Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI) — called Piker's remarks “unacceptable. Full stop.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) — called Piker's remarks “dangerous, malicious and antisemitic.”
Two things are true at once. El-Sayed's campaign has repeatedly said he condemns terrorism and antisemitism, and he did apologize — in person, on the record — for the remark that caused the most damage. It is also true that a fellow Michigan Democrat called his synagogue-attack response excuse-making, his own party's leadership condemned the livestreamer he shared a stage with, and his campaign still couldn't say which two of four festive Sept. 11 events its own nominee planned to attend.
