With just days left until Election Day, right-wing media figures are speaking about Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in openly Islamophobic terms, equating his Muslim identity with terrorism or antisocial tendencies often without even a pretext of justification.
Islamophobia has long been endemic in conservative media and it was foundational to the creation of the post-9/11 national security state, two political forces that are inextricably linked. Even acknowledging this contemporary history, recent comments made by right-wing pundits about El-Sayed — whose race could determine control of the Senate — are remarkable for their blatant, undisguised bigotry.
If the unmistakable signal conveyed by repeating Barack Obama’s middle name was perhaps too subtle, right-wing figures are now simply making that subtext the plain text.
An October 22 comment by Fox News host Jesse Watters exemplifies this dynamic. “It's kind of silly that you have an FBI agent running against a Muslim,” Watters said on The Five. “It writes itself.”
In Watters’ telling, simply being Muslim calls into question a candidate’s fitness for elected office. His overt bigotry is an extension and intensification of a phenomenon I documented in August after El-Sayed won the Democratic Senate nomination in Michigan, in which right-wing media figures described him and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is also Muslim, as leading figures in a supposed red-green alliance between socialists and Islamists.
On his own show that evening, Watters again deployed El-Sayed’s religion as a pejorative. “Abdul’s been stuck in the Muslim muck for about a month,” he said.
Greg Gutfeld, Watters’ co-host on The Five, gave a similar analysis of the supposed defects of Muslim communities. “The problem with Muslimism in America is separatism and rebellion against assimilation,” Gutfeld said.
His co-host, Dana Perino, added: “The nonassimilation thing, I think, is really important.”
Like Fox News, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast is a hotbed of open Islamophobia. Bannon previously referred to Mamdani as “a Ugandan Marxist jihadist that should be denaturalized,” and the show’s coverage of the Michigan Senate race has been more of the same.
On the October 10 episode, guest and former Trump campaign adviser Steve Cortes called El-Sayed a “crazy jihadi,” language that President Donald Trump echoed later in the month.
“The Muslims in Dearborn, the radical, America-hating Muslims from Dearborn, they put their jihadi in. He’s their nominee,” Cortes said.
Then on the October 17 episode, guest and Michigan right-wing activist Ron Armstrong praised two Democratic operatives who wrote an op-ed arguing against El-Sayed, adding that El-Sayed’s religion is an explicit reason to oppose him.
“They will not be voting for Abdul Sayed, period,” Armstrong said of the op-ed, before adding his own criticisms: “He is extreme. He is radical. He is Muslim. He's anti-Christian. All of the things that we know.”
On The Charlie Kirk Show — which, like War Room, airs on Real America’s Voice — host Andrew Kolvet discussed El-Sayed’s support, or lack thereof, among Black voters.
“He might have all the Abduls, and all the Mohammeds — he might have Dearborn on lockdown,” Kolvet said, but “he doesn’t have the Black preachers.”
“You can eat all the fried chicken you want, Mr. El-Sayed, but your middle name is still Mohammed,” Kolvet said, adding that El-Sayed couldn’t be “honest” about “your religion.”
Cortes was a guest on the show’s October 8 episode to promote an Islamophobic documentary about Dearborn, Michigan. “I'm trying to raise the warning for the good citizens of Michigan and all over America that Islam is not compatible — it is simply not compatible with Western civilization, with our way of life.”
Over on Newsmax, host Carl Higbie referred to El-Sayed and Mamdani as “two Muslim people that, I don’t think, copes well with the American ideology.”
Elsewhere at the network, host Rob Schmitt interviewed right-wing radio host Michael Savage, who asked of El-Sayed: “Why do all of these Muslim politicians have this arrogant, imperious sneer as though they're getting over on us, in front of our own eyes and we're not doing anything about it?”
“He's literally saying to us, Dummy, I'm going to do you in when I get in, and you can't do anything about it,” he continued.
Savage went on to say El-Sayed was the “proverbial scorpion that is being led across the river on your back, and when I sting you and you're dying, you'll look up and say, Why did you sting me? I'll say to you, because I'm a scorpion. That's this man to a T.”
On her Pod Force One podcast, New York Post columnist Miranda Devine referred to El-Sayed as a “socialist, Muslim-supremacist candidate.”
MAGA media figure Wayne Allyn Root called El-Sayed, “a communist, radical Muslim,” and added that “Islam is a death sentence for Western civilization,” and is “incompatible with America and the U.S. Constitution.”
In addition to these somewhat more standard right-wing outlets and figures, there is a growing swarm of right-wing content creators who often characterize themselves as independent journalists producing street-level footage that purports to depict a Muslim “invasion” or “Islamic takeover.” As but one example, Islamophobic provocateur Jake Lang held an event during which “crusaders” protested an El-Sayed event while holding signs calling him a terrorist.
Anti-Muslim bigotry in right-wing media extends beyond El-Sayed, of course. Figures in that world repeatedly tried to link Mamdani with 9/11, based on nothing but his religion and city of residence. Conservative pundits have spent years demonizing Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), including calling for her denaturalization and deportation, which the Trump administration is now pursuing. Some in right-wing media are attempting to link the protests in Paris to the rise of progressive Muslim candidates and politicians in the United States under the myth of the “red-green alliance.”
What we’re seeing now in the closing days of the Michigan race is the poisonous bigotry that is always just below the surface in right-wing media, seeping out through its pores.
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters
