El-Sayed Site Endorsed Synagogue Attack. Campaign Refuses to Investigate.

A line endorsing a truck attack on a Michigan synagogue appeared on Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed's own campaign website — and his campaign has refused to investigate who put it there, while two progressive heavyweights just funneled over $1.2 million into his race.

The stakes are plain: if a Republican's website carried text praising an attack on a minority house of worship, the story would dominate every front page in the country. Instead, a sitting Senate candidate gets to shrug and walk away.

Here's what happened. In March, a truck driver rammed the Temple Israel complex in West Bloomfield, Michigan, which houses a synagogue and a preschool. El-Sayed recorded a video response in which he said violence could never be justified — but also offered the formulation "hurt people hurt people," which drew fierce criticism for its moral equivalence. He later apologized for how he framed those comments.

But the transcript of that speech posted on El-Sayed's own website contained an additional line that never appeared in his spoken delivery. Right after the sentence about violence not being justified, the transcript read: "it was and he should have done it."

Someone inside that campaign either typed those words or allowed them to stay.

Former Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Lon Johnson discovered the text this spring while reviewing the transcript, alerted the campaign, and the line was quietly removed. But when Johnson asked who was responsible — was it a transcription error, or a deliberate insertion by a staffer? — he got nothing. No answers. No investigation. No disciplinary action. Johnson went public on X this week, telling the New York Post: "Now if it was a transcript error, say that. Was it an individual who purposely edited that statement? Then was there ever an attempt to find who they were and to fire them? These are simple questions."

The El-Sayed campaign did not respond to the Post's requests for comment.

Johnson, who co-authored a Detroit News op-ed urging voters to leave the Senate line blank rather than support El-Sayed, also flagged the candidate's refusal at a September University of Michigan event to condemn Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps — El-Sayed instead condemned U.S. military interventions — and his refusal to say Iran was a greater threat than Israel. At an October 9 debate, El-Sayed dismissed the question as a "ridiculous hypothetical."

Meanwhile, the progressive establishment is circling the wagons. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dumped $1 million into the Abdul for Michigan Victory Fund, and Sen. Bernie Sanders transferred $250,000, according to Europe Says. AOC is campaigning across Michigan for El-Sayed this week and declared she would not wake up after Election Day "wishing I did more to combat the smears aimed at Abdul."

Smears. A line endorsing a synagogue attack appeared on this man's website, his campaign won't say who wrote it, and questions are "smears."

That word choice tells you everything about the current pecking order of outrage. An antisemitic statement materializes on a candidate's official page, and the institutional response is to fund the candidate harder and dismiss the inquiry as a distraction.

The question that lingers isn't just who typed those nine words. It's why nobody with power in this candidate's party seems to think the answer matters.