Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed quietly set more than 100 of his own YouTube videos to private ahead of last week's primary win, scrubbing on-camera statements opposing the Second Amendment, trashing Fourth of July fireworks, and calling American football a vehicle for "toxic masculinity" — and the public only knows because archivists at CNN's KFile had already saved copies.
That's the real stake: a candidate for federal office tried to memory-hole his own record, and the only reason it didn't work is because someone preserved the evidence first. Without independent archives, El-Sayed walks into the general election against Republican Mike Rogers with a clean slate, and the establishment press lets it happen.
CNN's KFile broke the story. According to the New York Post, at least 100 videos were made private before El-Sayed's primary victory. The deleted content includes a July 2024 video titled "Can we PLEASE find another way to celebrate July 4th? Four reasons why fireworks suck," with chapter headings like "Fireworks just aren't worth it: hear us out." Another scrubbed clip showed El-Sayed floating the replacement of the Second Amendment's right to bear arms with a constitutional right to health care.
The Daily Caller highlighted El-Sayed's 2021 Substack post arguing that "the toxic masculinity at the heart of America's most popular sport — and men's sports culture more generally — is way deeper than a few emails or a Jay-Z turnaround." Breitbart reported that in other deleted clips, El-Sayed dismissed border security as an issue Republicans "love to flog" that "doesn't even make the top five among issues that people in the United States actually care about."
In unearthed audio reported by the Post, El-Sayed linked football to America's founding sins: "You think about all the wars that we fight abroad, all of the sordid history of oppressing other people in the name of this American idea whether it was 'Manifest Destiny' and destroying Native Americans, or it was the transatlantic slave trade." He added: "A lot of these narratives you kind of see echoed in the ethos of football."
El-Sayed's campaign told CNN the remarks were "cherry-picked comments from old podcasts" that "don't reflect his beliefs today." A spokesperson insisted: "Abdul is the former captain of his high school football team, loves Michigan football on Saturdays, and celebrates the Fourth of July with fireworks like the next Michigander." The campaign pointed to a July 4th X post where El-Sayed wrote: "Happy Fourth of July, Michigan! Enjoy the fireworks as we commit ourselves to building a country where all of us can thrive."
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has said El-Sayed "represents the politics of the future." Rogers called him an extremist who "wants to empty prisons and put murderers and sex offenders back on our streets." Sen. Tom Cotton described him as "a true radical who has palled around with people that said America had 9/11 coming."
This is the censorship pipeline in action: a politician produces years of content, decides it's inconvenient, hits "private" — and trusts that compliant platforms and a compliant press will let the record vanish. The only guardrail is whether someone saved the file. El-Sayed is betting nobody did, or that nobody will care. Michigan voters will decide if the archive or the rebrand tells the truth.
