WASHINGTON — Far-left Michigan Democratic Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed on Sunday defended allowing trans female athletes in girls’ sports, arguing kids already get exposed to everything these days anyways.
El-Sayed insisted that divisive culture-war issues, such as male-to-female competitors using women’s locker rooms, are manufactured issues.
“I think we manufacture these social issues,” El-Sayed told CBS News’ “60 Minutes.”
“All the world’s information [is] in your pocket,” he added, referring to smartphones. “The notion somehow that you are going to prevent your child from being exposed to something that you may find disagreeable, and that that is going to be because of school, is so profoundly outdated.
“I think it’s really important for us to recognize that the free flow of information is actually a beautiful thing.”
The question has been a thorny one for Democrats because of pressure from left their base to allow transgender female athletes to compete in girls’ sports and the widespread unpopularity of doing so among the general public.
A recent Pew Research survey found that 73% of Americans were uncomfortable with the idea of leaving girls’ sports open to transgender competition.
El-Sayed’s Republican foe, Mike Rogers, quickly slammed him over his remarks, calling them “completely unacceptable.”
Other critics also quickly piled on.
“Oh my word what a terrible answer,” conservative influencer Will Chamberlain tweeted about El-Sayed.
“‘Your daughters are going to see male genitalia anyway, so who cares if they see it in their locker room.’ – LITERALLY Abdul’s position,” wrote the counsel to the Article III Project.
In August, El-Sayed went viral with an interview on Fox News’ Jesse Watters when he likened circumcision to transgender surgeries on children that could leave them sterile for life.
“So you think it’s OK for a parent to slash his kid’s ding-a-ling off? You think that’s OK?” Watters had asked him at the time.
El-Sayed shot back, “Do you really want to have this conversation?
“Are you circumcised?”
During his “60 Minutes” interview with correspondent Ross Douthat, El-Sayed said he is “not running to govern sports.
“A lot of the cultural war issues that get fought right now are about trying to distract us from the fact that we can’t afford our gas, can’t afford our groceries, can’t see a doctor, are worried about whether or not our kids are going to have a good life,” he said.
El-Sayed currently has a 5.3 percentage point edge over Rogers in the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate polling.
