Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed clashed sharply with Martha MacCallum over the war in Iran during a combative appearance on Fox News Monday.
El-Sayed, a left-wing Democrat and former public health official, holds a narrow polling advantage over Republican former Congressman Mike Rogers in Michigan. The race is considered crucial to Democrats’ efforts to win control of the Senate.
Opposition to the war in Iran—and to much of America’s foreign intervention abroad—has become a central theme of El-Sayed’s campaign.
MacCallum pressed him on those positions during her Fox News program Monday afternoon while discussing recent terrorist attacks. El-Sayed described the attacks as “awful and terrible” following the FlyDubai hijacking.
She cited a previous comment in which El-Sayed said Americans should remain “curious about people who do them, what causes them to do these sorts of things, why these things happen, what happens when individuals who commit these acts are in pain.”
MacCallum interpreted the remark as suggesting that the United States had “been on the wrong side of our own policies” and that El-Sayed was blaming America for terrorism.
“No, it’s not—the victim is never at fault, and terrorism is wrong no matter who perpetrates the terrorism, who it is perpetrated against,” El-Sayed responded before turning the conversation toward Iran.
“War is a system of violence, when you think about a war we shouldn’t be fighting, like the war in Iran right now,” he said.
Abdul El-Sayed (pictured left) clashed with Martha MacCallum (pictured right) over the war in Iran during the left-wing Michigan Senate candidate’s Fox News appearance Monday
El-Sayed has a narrow polling lead over Republican former Congressman Mike Rogers in a pivotal Michigan Senate race Democrats need to win to take control of the chamber
MacCallum countered: “Probably because Iran created a huge threat to the neighborhood and killed thousands of American citizens.”
El-Sayed argued that the nuclear danger posed by Iran had been contained under the Iran deal negotiated during Barack Obama’s presidency.
The exchange came the same day El-Sayed announced a Michigan rally featuring the former president.
“I don’t know about that, they had been breaking the JCPOA by many estimations,” MacCallum replied, referring to the nuclear agreement.
El-Sayed maintained that the threat had been contained and challenged the premise behind the conflict. “Ask yourself, does more war make us safer?” he asked.
As MacCallum attempted to respond, El-Sayed insisted on finishing his argument. “I haven’t finished my point, I just want to finish what I was saying. We’re in a situation where we could have chosen peace and instead we chose war, and now you’ve got a situation at the Strait of Hormuz where we can’t move oil and gas,” he said.
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MacCallum eventually interrupted, citing a Wall Street Journal report that said the region was “almost to level of getting oil out of the strait and the region.”
“So why are our gas prices so high?” El-Sayed asked.
MacCallum challenged El-Sayed over his opposition to the war during her Fox News show Monday afternoon after the candidate condemned recent terrorist attacks as “awful and terrible” following the FlyDubai hijacking
Trump addressed the interview at a rally in Nebraska Monday night, labeling El-Sayed “a total communist”
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‘I think you are going to start to see them come down. That’s what we’re seeing from economists,’ MacCallum said.
‘That’s not what Michiganders are experiencing at the pump, ‘ El-Sayed responded.
It got even more heated, as MacCallum accused El-Sayed of filibustering before he argued MacCallum was a ‘fan’ of the war in Iran.
Trump reacted to the interview at his rally in Nebraska Monday night, calling El-Sayed ‘a total communist.’
‘El-Sayed was interviewed on a certain network. I won’t tell you which one (FOX). They hardly fight him at all. Why are they putting these people on our television networks? Why they always have to put Jessica Tarlov, another loser? They should stop,’ he added.
Michigan is one of the true toss-ups in November, as Progressive insurgent Abdul El-Sayed was declared the winner of a rollercoaster Democratic primary for the US Senate after squeaking by with a slim victory over Congresswoman Haley Stevens.
His single-point win raises new questions about whether his strength among base voters can translate to a general election this fall, as Democrats look to flip four seats necessary to secure a majority in the upper chamber.
El-Sayed fared well with Arab-American and younger voters, while Stevens nabbed support from older Democrats as well as African-American voters who do not seem ready to back El-Sayed in November.
Rogers, a former House GOP lawmaker, has been biding his time as the GOP’s presumptive nominee for months, waiting on a challenger to emerge from the Democratic Party.
The seat is rated as a ‘toss up’ by the Cook Political Report.