One question per section. Under each one: the case against him, what his side says, the evidence, and the clips. You and Rob read it, play the clip, and say what you think. Updated Oct 25, 2026.
How to use this page
Red box = the case against him. Blue box = what he and his defenders say. Read both before you give your take.
Clip cards say which side the clip helps, the exact cut, and the file name. Files are in the clips folder; upload them to Riverside's Media Board in number order.
Clips are longer this time. Each one runs long enough to hear the question and the answer.
Sections marked New came out after the first recording.
One rule: say what the record shows, then give your opinion and call it your opinion.
1Who is Abdul El-Sayed, and why does this race matter?
Most listeners have never heard of him. Thirty seconds of who he is before anything else.
41, born and raised in Michigan, parents immigrated from Egypt. Practicing Muslim.
Doctor and epidemiologist (disease and public health expert). University of Michigan, Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, MD from Columbia. Ran Detroit's health department at 30. Had never won an election before this year.
Beat Congresswoman Haley Stevens in the Aug 4 Democratic primary by about a point, while AIPAC-aligned groups spent more than $30 million against him.
Nov 3 he faces Republican Mike Rogers: Army vet, ex-FBI agent, former House Intelligence chairman. Polls are about tied, and the seat could decide who controls the Senate.
Start 0:00, stop 1:18 (1:18). Ends on his promise that his commitment to Jewish safety is "the same commitment that I have to the safety of my own daughters." Worth keeping that line in: it's his side in his own words.
File: 01-al-jazeera-primary-win-LONG.mp4
2What is the Muslim Brotherhood, and why does it matter?
Every other section turns on this group. Explain it plainly before you say a family member's name.
Founded in Egypt in 1928. A religious and political movement that wants government run by Islamic law (Sharia).
Hamas began in 1987 as its Palestinian branch. Hamas's own 1988 charter says so.
Its candidate Mohamed Morsi won Egypt's presidency in 2012; the army removed him in 2013. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE ban it as a terrorist group.
January 2026: the US designated its branches in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon as terrorist groups. The movement as a whole is not designated.
Some branches run in elections like a normal party. Others have backed violence. That split is why both sides can talk past each other about it.
The case against him
It's the movement Hamas grew out of. Ties to it are a fair thing to ask a Senate candidate about.
Rogers: "This is about the way you think, not the way you pray."
What his side says
It's a foreign political movement, not a religion, and most Muslims have nothing to do with it.
A co-host on The View: the Brotherhood is "practically defunct in Egypt. That's like asking him to denounce bell bottoms."
3Does his family have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood?
This is the question he answered "No" to on Meet the Press. His half-sister's old posts are the main evidence against that answer.
The case against him
Meet the Press, Oct 11: asked if he or his family have any ties to the Brotherhood: "No." "And your family doesn't?" "No."
His maternal half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi (now a University of Chicago professor), posted in June 2012: "My family has long been MB." MB means Muslim Brotherhood.
Days later: "Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college #respect."
July 2013: "I have had family jailed for being a part of it." NBC also read this one of hers on air: "Praying for all my family that supports the MB in Egypt."
Per the Free Beacon, his campaign called it "lies" and Islamophobic attacks, but did not deny she wrote the posts.
What his side says
"I have no ties. We have no ties." (NBC, Oct 14)
"I have never had these conversations with my mother. I wasn't raised by my mother." His parents split when he was about 3; he grew up with his dad and stepmom.
"You're using hearsay evidence from a tweet. It's just not serious."
"You want to ask me about what's happening in Egypt in 1970. Are you serious?"
AOC: it falls into "racist very clearly," and it hits "a little boy in Detroit that grew up without his mom." "How many of us have had a family member... that has nothing to do with you as a person."
Worth saying for fairness: the same 2012 post goes on, "but I've always felt that it has navigated the political sphere poorly/destructively." She was critical of it, not cheering it on.
Start 22:09, stop 23:52 (1:43). Welker asks about Rogers' attacks, then straight out. He says "No" three times, then his answer: Rogers just wants to "repeat the word Muslim," "small people with small ideas." You get the denial and his reason in one clip.
Start 4:16, stop 5:33 (1:17). The posts on screen, then "Are you serious?", "hearsay evidence from a tweet," and "are you insinuating that somehow I was lying?"
Start 0:43, stop 2:57 (2:14). Her full case: racist, he was raised without his mom, "none of this has to do with Abdul." The strongest version of his side.
File: 03c-aoc-defends-him.mp4
Talk about it
His sister says one thing, he says another. Who do you believe, and why?
If your estranged relative posted about something, would you say "no ties" or "I don't know, I wasn't raised by her"? Which is the honest answer?
4What about his mother and the charity Treasury shut down?
A separate thing from the posts: where his birth mother worked.
The case against him
From 1999 to 2004 she worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA) in Columbia, Missouri.
In 2004 Treasury designated IARA's parent group a terror financier and shut it down.
Court papers show her name more than a dozen times on the charity's wire transfers to Iraq.
Rogers raised it in the Oct 8 debate. PolitiFact called his line "mostly accurate, with context."
What his side says
She was never charged with anything. She's a nurse practitioner in Missouri.
The criminal case was about breaking US sanctions on Iraq, and the charity pleaded guilty to that, not to funding terror.
Start 0:09, stop 0:56 (47 sec). Rogers: "bought off by Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda." El-Sayed: "You go after my mom?" Rogers: "I'm not going after your mom." Then the hosts on what it said about the race.
File: 04-cnn-debate-going-after-my-mom-LONG.mp4
Talk about it
Is where his mother worked 20 years ago fair game, when he wasn't raised by her?
5His in-laws: CAIR, the money, and the watch list
The in-laws are the family he does live with. One funds his campaign; the other was on a terror watch list.
In one breath:CAIR is the biggest Muslim civil rights group in the US. ISNA is one of the biggest Muslim organizations. In the 2008 Holy Land Foundation case (leaders convicted of sending about $12 million to Hamas) prosecutors listed both as unindicted co-conspirators: named, never charged.
The case against him
Father-in-law Tayeb Jukaku ran CAIR Michigan for five years and is still on its board. He sits on ISNA's Founders Committee.
He gave $300,000 to the super PAC backing El-Sayed.
July 20: $100,000 to CAIR's own super PAC. July 21: that PAC sent $175,000 to the same pro-El-Sayed super PAC. Both are in FEC filings.
The judge in the Holy Land case said there was "ample evidence" tying CAIR and ISNA to Hamas.
Sister-in-law Mariam Jukaku was on the federal terror watch list (her boarding pass was stamped as a "known or suspected terrorist"). Rogers: "Where there's smoke there's fire."
What his side says
CAIR and ISNA were never charged. The same judge said naming them in public shouldn't have happened.
A donation to a legal super PAC is legal.
Mariam Jukaku was one of about 20 people who sued over the watch list in 2016 and was taken off it. El-Sayed: "She did nothing wrong and was captured on that." He says the list treats people as "guilty until proven innocent" because of their names.
Start 0:35, stop 1:40 (1:05). The lawsuit, his answer ("she did nothing wrong"), and Rogers' "where there's smoke there's fire." Fox's own captions garble a few words; the audio is clean.
File: 05b-fox-sister-in-law-watchlist.mp4
Talk about it
Where's the line between "his family" and "the people funding his campaign"?
The watch list catches innocent people. Does it tell us anything here, or nothing?
6Has he disavowed the Brotherhood?New
For months Republicans said he wouldn't. On Oct 17 at a town hall in Caro, Michigan, he did, then turned it around on the man who asked. This is the best both-sides clip in the episode.
The case against him
It took until mid-October, under pressure, after months of attacks.
He said "Sure, yeah, absolutely" and then spent two minutes on why the question was bigots asking, not on the Brotherhood.
Alyssa Farah Griffin on The View: the JFK comparison "isn't quite equitable," because questioning a Catholic's faith "is different than asking a question about reported ties to a terrorist organization." His half-sister and mom were reported, so it's "a fair question."
The "no ties" answer is still the problem. Disavowing the group doesn't answer what his sister wrote.
What his side says
He disavowed it the moment he was asked: "Sure. Yeah, absolutely."
PolitiFact rated Rogers' claim that he "didn't disavow" the Brotherhood False.
"You assume, Tommy, that because I am Muslim that somehow I would have some allegiance to something that is not our Constitution."
JFK was asked if he'd answer to the Pope. "I'm not running to be a Muslim senator. I'm running for US Senate and happen to be Muslim."
Alyssa Farah Griffin said the questioner was reportedly a Republican operative. When El-Sayed asked him if he disavows reading religious doctrine into US law, the man said "I do not."
Start 3:37, stop 4:33 (56 sec). He asks Tommy: "Do you disavow any attempt to read any religious doctrine into the laws of our country?" Tommy: "I do not." Optional, but it's the moment that went viral.
Start 0:12, stop 1:33 (1:21). His JFK answer, then Rogers: "I've never called him a terrorist... This is about the way you think, not the way you pray." Good if you only have time for one.
Start 2:06, stop 4:12 (2:06). Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump aide, takes both sides in one go: the Brotherhood question was answered, "close that chapter," but Temple Israel and Piker are fair game, and the JFK line doesn't fit. Ends with the room applauding her.
File: 06d-the-view-both-sides.mp4
Talk about it
He disavowed it right away. Does that settle it for you, or does the "no ties" answer still bother you?
Is the JFK comparison fair?
7Did he back the Brotherhood when it ran Egypt?
Two things with his own name on them, from before he was in politics: a 2011 op-ed and a 2012 newspaper statement.
The case against him
Jan 30, 2011 (HuffPost): during the Egyptian revolution he argued a Brotherhood government "would look nothing like Iran" and called the comparison to Hamas "foolish."
Nov 25, 2012: after Morsi, the Brotherhood president, put himself above Egypt's courts, a statement backing him ran in Al-Ahram, Egypt's state paper. Signer 33 of 46: "Dr. Abdul Rahman El-Sayed, New York." He was at Columbia in New York then.
The statement urged Morsi to purge the media and the police. Days later, Morsi supporters attacked protesters outside the palace.
His campaign never answered the Free Beacon about it.
What his side says
Fact-checkers (Bridge Michigan, Sept 3; PolitiFact, Oct 19) say there is no evidence he ever pledged support to the Brotherhood. The 2012 statement backed Egypt's elected president; it was "not a pledge of support for the Muslim Brotherhood as a whole."
The same statement says the signers "don't hide our concern" about the powers, and asks Morsi to make clear they end once the constitution is written.
The 2011 piece is a pro-democracy argument: support the protesters, let Egyptians vote. It never calls the Brotherhood harmless outright.
Morsi was Egypt's first freely elected president. Backing an election result isn't backing an ideology.
He was in his late 20s. Does a statement from 2012 still count?
Backing an elected president vs. backing the movement behind him: is there a real difference here?
8Did he speak to Brotherhood-linked groups?New
The "speech in college" story. It's a short clip from his university's Muslim Students Association. Plus a convention he spoke at this September.
Heads upThe viral clip is 15 seconds long and it's from a promo video, not a full speech. In it, a young man says: "The religion came not to enslave, not to oppress, but as a mercy, as an opportunity to be dignified, to be raised, to be called a believer." That's all of it. There's nothing extreme in the words themselves. The case against him is about the group, not what he said.
The case against him
At the University of Michigan he was vice president, then president, of the Muslim Students Association (MSA).
The national MSA was founded in 1963, and its founders included members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The posters (Great Lakes HQ, Pamela Geller) call it "preaching the Quran to the Muslim Brotherhood group."
ISNA convention, Detroit, Sept 2026: he spoke on a panel and got a standing ovation. The speaker list included Pakistani cleric Tariq Masood, who per Pakistani media admitted marrying off his 13-year-old niece and gave a 2024 sermon titled "The Final Humiliation of the Jews."
In a 2011 podcast he named Tariq Ramadan, grandson of the Brotherhood's founder, as one of three writers he draws inspiration from (per the Free Beacon). The US had barred Ramadan in 2004 over donations to a Hamas-linked charity. He was later convicted of rape in Switzerland.
What his side says
The MSA today is a normal campus club at hundreds of colleges: Friday prayers, Ramadan dinners, volunteering. The rest of that same video is students playing football, eating together, and fixing sidewalks.
Fox News Digital, after looking into it, says it found no tie between El-Sayed and the Brotherhood.
On ISNA, his spokeswoman: "Abdul is not affiliated with and does not endorse any other participant of the conference."
What he actually said at ISNA was about belonging: "We are a community as Muslim Americans who believe in the rhyming of our Muslim ideals and our American ideals."
Ramadan held a chair at Oxford while El-Sayed was there. Naming a famous scholar in 2011 is not endorsing what he was convicted of years later.
Heads upTwo things I could not confirm: (1) that the speaker is El-Sayed. The posters say so, and I found no denial, but he graduated in 2007 and the video is labeled 2009-2010, so it's either older footage or a return visit. (2) The Ramadan quote: I found the Free Beacon's report, not the podcast itself. Say "the Free Beacon reports."
Start 2:20, stop 2:45 (25 sec). The viral 15 seconds plus a little on each side. It's a montage with music, so there's no longer speech to play; the rest of the video is other students and other speakers.
File: 08-msa-2009-video.mp4
Talk about it
Is a college club fair game because of who founded the national group in 1963?
He shared a convention stage with a cleric like Masood. Should a Senate candidate check who else is speaking?
9The 2011 research paper: what did it actually say?New
The paper that's being called racist and "eugenics." Read this one closely, because what's going around isn't quite what the paper says.
Heads upIt is not about Muslim women marrying Muslim men. The paper never mentions Muslims or religion. It's about Arab-American mothers and whether the baby's father was Arab or not, and how that lined up with premature births. It also never says anyone should marry or have kids with anyone. I read the whole paper.
Title: "Interethnic mating and risk for preterm birth among Arab-American mothers." Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, June 2011. Authors: El-Sayed and his Columbia professor, Sandro Galea. Funded in part by NIH grants.
Data: every birth to an Arab-American mother in Michigan, 2000 to 2005: 21,621 births, from state birth certificates.
Finding: Arab-American mothers whose baby's father was not Arab had 18% higher odds of a premature birth (before 37 weeks) and 24% higher odds of a late premature birth (34 to 36 weeks) than those whose baby's father was Arab.
For white mothers, the father's ethnicity made no clear difference.
Why, per the paper: two guesses, not proven. One, the stress and discrimination mixed couples face. Two, cultural habits: the mothers with non-Arab partners were older, less often married, more educated, more often US-born, and more likely to smoke.
"Mating" is the normal word in this kind of research. It means who had a child with whom.
The case against him
Sen. Ted Cruz: "'science' with a pre-ordained racist & eugenics outcome."
Headlines: "warns Arab women not to procreate outside their race" (Legal Insurrection), "racist Columbia research paper" (NY Post).
Critics ask: flip it around. If a white researcher published that white women had worse births with non-white fathers, would anyone defend it?
The paper controls for only a few things (age, education, marriage, smoking, birth country). It can't rule out that the gap comes from something else entirely, and the paper admits that.
What his side says
I couldn't find any response from El-Sayed or his campaign on this one.
In the paper's favor: comparing birth outcomes across ethnic groups is routine in public health, and the paper cites a stack of similar studies on Mexican-American and Black mothers. It reports a pattern; it doesn't tell anyone what to do.
One of the two explanations the paper offers is that discrimination against mixed couples causes stress, which is the opposite of saying mixed couples are bad.
Arab-American mothers already have lower premature-birth rates than white mothers. The study was trying to figure out why.
Put on screenNo news clip worth playing on this one. Pull up the paper itself (link above) and read the title and the one-line result out loud.
Talk about it
Is this a racist paper, or a normal study with an ugly title?
Does it matter that it's about ethnicity, not religion?
10Did he take money from people tied to CAIR?
Not his family: his own campaign account, and his own choice to keep the money.
The case against him
A Fox News review of FEC filings: more than $115,000 from at least 41 people who work for or have led CAIR, in eight states.
One of them is Nihad Awad, CAIR's co-founder and director. After Oct 7 he said he was "happy to see people breaking the siege." The Biden White House condemned that "in the strongest terms." He gave El-Sayed $750 ($250 + $500). El-Sayed kept it.
Another donor, Mohamed Soltan, is the son of jailed Brotherhood cleric Salah Soltan, who on video in 2011 called for killing Israel's ambassador.
Getting money out of politics is one of El-Sayed's main promises.
What his side says
Donating to a candidate is legal, and CAIR has never been charged with anything.
Mohamed Soltan is an American citizen Egypt jailed for life in its crackdown; the US got him freed. He isn't his father.
The White House condemned Awad, not El-Sayed. $750 is a small share of his money.
Tying every Muslim donor to CAIR is guilt by association with the biggest Muslim civil rights group in the country.
Put on screenNo good clip here (the old 12-second Fox one is cut). Use the four screenshots in images/white-house-awad/.
Talk about it
Should he give back Awad's $750? Would you?
11Temple Israel: did he excuse a terror attack?
A Hezbollah-inspired attack on a synagogue in his own state, and what he said the next day.
March 12, 2026: a man drove a truck into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, outside Detroit. About 140 preschool kids were in the building. All got out safe. He traded fire with guards and died at the scene.
The FBI called it Hezbollah-inspired. The attacker's brother was a Hezbollah commander killed in an Israeli strike.
The case against him
The next day, after condemning it: "Hurt people hurt people. Violence is a cycle." Critics say that explains the attack.
At a University of Michigan event weeks later, asked if the same applies to a Jew who attacked a mosque after Oct 7: "After Oct. 7, there was a whole genocide against Palestinians."
He only apologized on Aug 30, after winning the primary, and said his words "may have been misconstrued."
Alyssa Farah Griffin: it "felt dismissive of terrorists" and he "walked it back 5 months later."
What his side says
He condemned it, in the same video: "There is never a justification for attacking innocent people or houses of worship."
He apologized: "To anyone who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I'm really sorry. That was not my intention."
On Meet the Press he said he regrets it: "if I step on somebody's grief, of course I regret that," and that hearing Sen. Elissa Slotkin describe her reaction taught him he'd been "stepping on somebody's pain."
Start 21:10, stop 22:09 (59 sec). The Slotkin conversation and "of course I regret that." Runs right into the "no ties" clip if you want to play them back to back.
File: 11d-meet-the-press-regret.mp4
Talk about it
He condemned it and he apologized. Is that enough?
Does "a whole genocide," when asked about the other direction, change how you hear "hurt people hurt people"?
12Hasan Piker: is he responsible for who he campaigns with?
Piker is a huge left-wing streamer your audience may not know. Introduce him first.
The case against him
Piker in 2019: "America deserved 9/11." He's said Hamas is "a thousand times better" than Israel.
El-Sayed held a rally with him at the University of Michigan and posted it on his own channel.
Haley Stevens, the Democrat he beat, called on him to drop Piker.
Asked about it: "I'm not as focused on who I'm campaigning with."
What his side says
Piker walked back the 9/11 line two days later.
Piker reaches millions of young voters. Candidates don't vet every supporter.
Start 9:06, stop 9:17. "I'm not as focused on who I'm campaigning with." Short, but it's the whole answer.
File: 16-ms-now-piker-campaigning.mp4
Talk about it
Where's your line on holding a candidate responsible for a supporter?
13Israel, Iran and October 7th: where does he stand?
His own words on Israel since Oct 7, and the yes-or-no questions he wouldn't answer yes or no.
The case against him
Oct 21, 2023, two weeks after Oct 7 and before the ground invasion: "At the heart of the genocide being perpetrated against innocent Palestinians today..."
Asked three times on CNN if Israel has a right to exist: "I'm not going to play this gotcha game."
Oct 7, 2025 fundraising email: opened with "Netanyahu's military," never said Hamas. His campaign says it "mistakenly went out."
Debate, Iran or Israel, which is the bigger threat: "a ridiculous hypothetical... both of them have proven dangerous."
An Iranian-American student whose uncle got 50 lashes asked if he stands against the IRGC (Iran's Revolutionary Guard, a US-designated terror group). He never said yes.
What his side says
He has condemned Hamas on the record: "heinous attack on October 7th... I condemned it then, and I condemn it now."
On right to exist: "Israel exists... does everybody have equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination? That's Jewish Israelis and Palestinians." His point is about US tax dollars, not Israel's existence.
On Iran: "I agree that Iran is a dangerous threat. That's not a question." His argument is that Israel is pulling the US into a war with Iran.
To the student he said he will "always stand with movements for freedom and democracy" in Iran.
Start 5:33, stop 6:22 (49 sec). "Ridiculous hypothetical," then "I agree that Iran is a dangerous threat" and the $2.8 billion in bombs. Replaces the old 19-second Fox cut.
He says Iran is a threat and Israel is dragging us into war. Is that a dodge or a real position?
Why won't he just say "yes, Israel has a right to exist"?
14Are the attacks on him fair, or is it Islamophobia?
The closing question. You've seen both sides of every piece. Now the two of you say where you land.
The case against him
Almost everything on this page is his own words or his own choices: "no ties," the 2012 statement, "hurt people," Piker, the IRGC answer, keeping Awad's money.
Rogers: "I've never called him a terrorist... This is about the way you think, not the way you pray."
The View's Alyssa Farah Griffin: calling him a jihadist or terrorist is Islamophobia, but questions about his record are "legitimate."
What his side says
Fact-checkers found Rogers' "pledged support" claim had no evidence (Bridge) and his "didn't disavow" claim False (PolitiFact).
Ted Cruz said the day after the primary that his campaign is "openly embracing terrorist organizations." Nothing backs that.
Much of the case is relatives: a mother who didn't raise him, a half-sister's posts, a sister-in-law who was cleared.
"Ask everybody the same thing": do white candidates get asked to disavow the KKK? (a co-host on The View)
Talk about it
Which of these do you think is fair game, and which goes too far?
Rob: what's the one thing you'd want an undecided Michigan voter to take from this?
Who's who, in one breath each
Abdul El-Sayed: 41, doctor, Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan.
Mike Rogers: his Republican opponent. Army vet, ex-FBI, former House Intelligence chairman.
Eman Abdelhadi: his maternal half-sister, University of Chicago professor. The 2012-13 posts.