Sen. Bernie Moreno is turning up the heat on Michigan Senate candidate Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, accusing the Democrat of being among the most extreme candidates in the 2026 midterm elections and pointing to his political associations as evidence.
Speaking Thursday during a Breitbart News “Fight Club” roundtable hosted by Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow and Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle, Moreno described El-Sayed as “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” and said the Democrat's record and associations should receive serious scrutiny.
“This guy’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Moreno said. “He goes on Fox News, and he deflects every question: ‘Did I want America to suffer during 9/11? Well, people can’t afford groceries.’ That isn’t the question that you were just asked. This guy is the most dangerous one.”
Moreno compared El-Sayed to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, arguing that both politicians have built political identities around progressive messaging while presenting themselves as polished communicators.
“These guys are good communicators — they’re slick,” Moreno said.
“You know, I came for the car business. I grew up in the car business. I remember the car business in the 80s and 90s, and the guys you gotta watch out for are the slick ones,” he added.
El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Michigan's open Senate seat, has rejected the socialist label even as his campaign has received support from prominent figures on the American left, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Rashida Tlaib.
His relationship with left-wing streamer Hasan Piker has also become a major Republican talking point.
Piker appeared with El-Sayed during the campaign and has faced intense criticism for past comments about the Sept. 11 attacks. In 2019, Piker said that “America deserved 9/11,” a statement he later characterized as inappropriate and disavowed. El-Sayed has also explicitly rejected the idea that the terrorist attacks were justified, saying in an April interview, “Of course I don’t think 9/11 was justified.”
That distinction has not stopped Republicans from making Piker a central part of their case against El-Sayed. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has highlighted the association in its campaign messaging, while Republican candidate Mike Rogers has repeatedly attacked El-Sayed over his relationship with Piker.
The dispute illustrates how intensely nationalized the Michigan Senate race has become. El-Sayed is campaigning on issues including health care and economic policy, while Republicans have focused heavily on his progressive agenda, political alliances and statements surrounding national security and foreign policy.
Moreno's remarks add another prominent Republican voice to that campaign offensive.
But one distinction matters: criticism of El-Sayed's associations and political positions is not the same thing as evidence that El-Sayed personally supported the Sept. 11 attacks. Available reporting documents that he rejected the attacks as justified and later called Piker's statement “dumb.”
The Michigan contest now sits squarely inside a broader 2026 fight over the direction of the Democratic Party — and over how far voters are willing to go with its progressive wing. For Republicans, El-Sayed's candidacy has become a vehicle for that argument; for Democrats, he has sought to pull the conversation back toward the everyday economic concerns of Michigan voters.
Either way, the battle is no longer merely about one Senate seat. It is a clash over ideology, political alliances and what voters believe the Democratic Party should represent in the years ahead.
