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Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan, once accused President Donald Trump of inciting terrorism in a 2020 interview, citing a foiled plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
“These are terrorists; we have to call them that. We have to recognize that that is what the face of terrorism looks like right now. We have to step up against it,” El-Sayed said.
“We gotta ask: why are these people getting radicalized? Well, there must be some radical, extremist cleric out there who may be tweeting up a storm about all the things that they think need to be done, like liberating Michigan.”
El-Sayed’s comments come as he wages a tight primary race against Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., with the Aug. 4 primary now less than a month away. His remarks also raise questions about his views on political rhetoric and its connection to violence.
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His comments reference a foiled plan to kidnap Whitmer that first surfaced in 2020.
A group of men associated with anti-government and militia circles, including the Wolverine Watchmen, allegedly planned to kidnap the governor from her vacation home in northern Michigan in an effort to end her COVID-19 restrictions.
The plot was foiled in October by law enforcement before any attempt was ever made.
Notably, The New York Times later reported that four of the 12 people charged in the alleged plot had been government agents or informants, prompting accusations of entrapment.
Although President Donald Trump did not call for any kind of violence against Whitmer, El-Sayed said he believed the president was at least partially responsible, pointing to a tweet Trump had made six months before the discovered plot.
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“LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” Trump wrote in a post on Twitter, the social media platform now known as X. The post was one of a series calling to “liberate” Virginia and Minnesota from COVID-19 restrictions imposed by Democratic governors. According to FBI comments to local media, the plot originated before Trump’s post.
El-Sayed called the posts emblematic of a cultural toxicity that had made violence more likely.
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“The idea that people would threaten her safety because she was willing to stand up to keep us all healthy is, to me, the example of what the kind of toxicity that we see out of Donald Trump creates,” El-Sayed said.
“And right now, the threat we are seeing is radical, far-right White Supremacy and the terrorists who would undo our society’s basic norms and mores.”
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El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment on whether his position on Trump’s rhetoric had changed in light of The New York Times reporting.
El-Sayed will face off against Stevens in the state’s Aug. 4 primaries.
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