WASHINGTON — Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed scrubbed videos from his YouTube channel in which he claimed that Fourth of July “fireworks suck,” questioned whether American football was “ethical” and floated the elimination of the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
At least 100 of El-Sayed’s videos were made private ahead of his primary win last week, though several had already been archived, CNN’s KFile first reported.
It’s only the latest example of far-left candidates having to distance themselves from their past holiday-hating remarks.
Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong recently walked back criticisms of Thanksgiving as a “colonizer holiday” and Valentine’s Day as “another day capitalism tells you how to show love.”
A far-left Queens Assembly candidate in the Big Apple last year also had comments unearthed that claimed all federal holidays “truly represent the silencing & destruction of our movements.”
The removals come as El-Sayed tries to tack to the middle in preparing to take on Republican nominee Mike Rogers in the crucial Nov. 3 general election.
A July 10, 2024, clip showed El-Sayed discussing “alternative ways of celebrating” America’s independence “that might be just as fun and are definitely less destructive,” The video featured time-stamped segments called, “Fireworks just aren’t worth it: hear us out,” and “Fireworks can trigger PTSD in veterans.”
“Can we PLEASE find another way to celebrate July 4th? Four reasons why fireworks suck,” the video was titled.
Another video showed El-Sayed, a former high school football player, asking whether the gridiron sport was “ethical” or “safe.” The candidate added in other unearthed audio that the game is “very much associated with a particularly masculine and oftentimes toxically masculine culture.”
“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 where folks who ‘founded this country’ on the backs of native folks that they destroyed, captured people, enslaved them and had them work their fields because they thought it was their right,” El-Sayed said.
“All of this, like a lot of these narratives you kind of see echoed in the ethos of football,” he claimed.
In a third clip, the Democrat suggested replacing the Constitution’s Second Amendment right to bear arms with a right to health care.
El-Sayed was also recorded accusing Republicans of using border security as an issue that they “love to flog” while arguing that it “doesn’t even make the top five among issues that people in the United States actually care about that affect their lives.”
“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,” a campaign rep told CNN. “Cherry-picked comments from old podcasts don’t reflect his beliefs today.”
The campaign also pointed to past posts in which El-Sayed celebrated July 4th.
“Happy Fourth of July, Michigan! Enjoy the fireworks as we commit ourselves to building a country where all of us can thrive,” he posted on X last year.
The following month, however, El-Sayed had also written on X: “As a father and a public health doctor, I ask this with all of my being: Do we love our children enough to rethink our relationship with guns?”
“The second amendment never meant any gun for anyone anywhere at any time,” he added.
Two years prior, in 2023, El-Sayed asked in a since-removed video: “What if we tweaked the Constitution, amended the amendment, and instead of the right to bear arms, we change it to the right to have health care?”
Not all of the content removed from El-Sayed’s public-facing profiles — including podcasts and a Substack page — included controversial political comments, though he has publicly backed away from some stances, such as 2020 comments in favor of defunding law enforcement.
