Abdul El-Sayed Gets Unlikely Ally After Tucker Carlson Defends His Past Comments About 9/11 As 'Obviously Right'

Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed found an unlikely ally in far-right commentator Tucker Carlson, who defended him amid conservative outrage over El-Sayed's past remarks about the September 11 terror attacks and their aftermath.

Conservatives lashed out at El-Sayed, a democratic socialist, after the New York Post brought attention to remarks made about the U.S. response to the attacks during a Sept. 7, 2021, episode of the America Dissected podcast.

Referencing the devastating and deadly impact of the War on Terror, El-Sayed said:

“9/11 scarred our country in profound ways, but what we did after 9/11 scarred millions of other people. When we talk about 9/11, we often fail to center them.”

The publication also spotlighted a since-deleted tweet El-Sayed posted on the 20th anniversary of the attacks, which fell just days after his podcast appearance:

"Today, I mourn the 3K lives, 6K injuries, & infrastructural devastation in NYC, perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my faith. Tomorrow, I’ll mourn ~1M lives, millions of injuries, & infrastructural devastation in 3 countries, perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my country.”

You can see the post below.

@AbdulElSayed/X

In response, El-Sayed’s campaign told The Post that El-Sayed's remarks are being twisted by Mike Rogers, El-Sayed's Republican opponent:

“Abdul has always unequivocally condemned terrorism and the September 11 attacks. Mike Rogers’ attempts to misrepresent Abdul’s beliefs are bad-faith lies meant to mislead Michiganders.”

The Post's reporting stoked the fires of conservative backlash but El-Sayed was defended by Carlson, who has publicly broken with his party in recent months.

Writing in his Friday newsletter, Carlson said El-Sayed's assessment of the U.S. response to the worst terror attack on U.S. soil "is obviously right":

“El-Sayed did not celebrate airplane hijackings or cheerlead Al-Qaeda; he simply said that the U.S. conducting terrorism of its own in response to 9/11 was not exactly an appropriate reaction. He is obviously right.”

“Your typical Fox News viewer is likely oblivious to this, but America’s response to 9/11 blew the original attack out of the water."

"George Bush’s subsequent war in Iraq, which made no sense considering Iraq did not do 9/11, got hundreds of thousands of innocents killed, had tens of thousands of American military casualties, and catalyzed the creation of ISIS. That means the US slaughtered enough civilians to account for dozens and dozens of 9/11s. And that is a conservative estimate.”

Carlson also took him at Rogers, who had told The Post that El-Sayed's “attitude towards the worst tragedy in American history is disgusting and makes him completely unfit to serve in public office.”

He wrote:

“Hold on a second. Disgusting? Understanding that the Bush administration was wrong to kill hundreds of thousands of people and waste trillions of dollars in Iraq, even though, again, Iraq did not do 9/11, is disgusting?”

“We are really not sure who Mike Rogers is, but if anyone in Michigan’s Senate race is ‘unfit to serve in public office,’ it is him."

As you can imagine, Carlson's remarks have angered Republicans even more.

Others did not expect to see this anywhere on their 2026 Bingo card.

Buckle up. We are confident the rest of this election cycle will get even weirder.