Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed on Monday shot back at Vice President Vance’s comment about him being “very, very evil.” Earlier Monday, Vice President Vance went after El-Sayed at a rally in Detroit, calling him…
Page A11From§Eachthe breakfast edition — 1 September 2026
Right-leaning outlets file five separate stories on one Michigan Democrat's posts and allies this week.
As it ran on the front
Watch how it works. One week, five stories, one Michigan Democrat, five separate outlets, and the throughline isn't policy — it's rotation. The Post runs the fireworks quote. The Examiner runs the Piker quote. Then CBS runs the deleted 9/11 posts, then the Times runs the 'Piker problem' angle, and El-Sayed spends the whole week doing damage control on things that aren't actually about anything — they're about him.
Here's the mechanism, and it's not complicated: you can't attack a guy's health care plan, so you attack his patriotism. Man says something skeptical about fireworks, and it becomes 'Democrat doesn't love his country.' Man defends a guy from getting canceled, and it becomes 'Democrat's Piker problem.' Man gets called 'evil' in a remark, and instead of that being the story — a national figure calling a candidate evil — the story becomes El-Sayed's response to being called evil. That's the trick. The insult becomes the news; the insulter disappears from the sentence.…
…(cont) I'm not telling you El-Sayed is right about fireworks, or right about Piker, or right about anything else. That's not the point, and if you're waiting for me to defend a guy's opinion on Roman candles, you're going to be disappointed. The point is that five outlets, in one week, decided the most important thing happening in a governor's race was a man's old posts and his choice of streamer friends — not his budget plan, not his health care position, not one dollar figure about what he'd actually do in office.
That's not journalism working. That's a pile-on with a press badge. And it works exactly the way it's supposed to: by the time the guy finishes explaining he's not a truther and he doesn't actually hate fireworks, the news cycle's over, and nobody remembers what he was running on in the first place.
You want to know who benefits when a candidate spends a week defending himself instead of making his case? Not the voter standing in line at the DMV wondering why her kid's premium went up again. The guy who never has to answer a follow-up question benefits. That's the whole racket, and it runs on a five-day cycle, every single week, on somebody.
“Five outlets, one candidate, one week, zero dollar figures about his actual platform — that's not scrutiny, that's a rotation schedule. When the story's always about the man and never about the budget, somebody's doing their job, and it isn't the reporters covering his health plan.”
“Look, a candidate's public statements and associations are fair game for coverage — that's just accountability journalism. It's not coordinated, it's just five different outlets independently arriving at the same guy in the same week. Coincidence. That's the word I meant to use.”
The receipts
Republicans hold their trolls close. For Democrats, it’s more complicated.
Michigan Senate Democratic nominee Abdul el Sayed on Monday again defended Hasan Piker after publicly distancing himself from the Twitch streamer in the wake of concerns that he is antisemitic. El Sayed campaigned with Hasan Piker multiple…
Abdul El-Sayed's deleted 9/11 social media posts sparked a firestorm after CBS News reported on the Michigan Senate candidate's past comments.
Democratic Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed appeared to defend his criticism of Fourth of July fireworks on "The Breakfast Club" radio show.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.