Republican operatives smear Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed with fear-based national-security attacks
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Donald Trump and several Republican officials launched a coordinated attack on Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, portraying him as a threat to U.S. national security and amplifying unproven claims about alleged extremist ties.
Donald Trump told a rally audience that Abdul El-Sayed would be the only senator required to pass through a metal detector before entering the Senate, using the remark to cast the candidate as a supposed national-security threat. Former Congressman and Senate candidate Mike Rogers, a former FBI agent and former Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said El-Sayed’s “radical ideology is a threat to our national security.”
Senator Ted Cruz escalated the rhetoric further, warning that placing El-Sayed on the Senate Intelligence Committee could endanger American service members and covert intelligence assets, and suggesting the candidate might share classified information with “Muslim Brotherhood terrorists.”
Senator Tim Sheehy, a member of the Armed Services Committee, echoed the attack with “serious national-security questions” about El-Sayed’s alleged ties to extremist groups, pointing to the risks attached to any senator’s access to sensitive classified material.
"Abdul El-Sayed’s radical ideology is a threat to our national security," Mike Rogers said. "He would have access to the very highest level of classified materials. And I believe, if that were to happen, there would be an unacceptably high risk that American servicemen and women, their lives would be endangered, and that our covert intelligence assets, their lives would be in danger because [there’s] every reason to believe Abdul El-Sayed would share that classified information with Muslim Brotherhood terrorists," Ted Cruz said. "Abdul El-Sayed’s ties to this group raise serious national security questions. As senators, we have access to some of our nation’s most sensitive, classified information, and I have serious concerns about the security risks posed by anyone associated with such a group serving in the Senate," Tim Sheehy said.
The statements center on alleged security dangers instead of El-Sayed’s policy positions, turning the race into a heavily politicized national-security scare campaign.