LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed has discovered the importance of political disavowals – at least when someone else’s associations are under the microscope.
El-Sayed is urging Republican opponent Mike Rogers to distance himself from Detroit pastor Lorenzo Sewell after Sewell helped organize Tuesday’s “Christian Crusader” demonstration in Dearborn alongside controversial activist and pardoned Jan. 6 defendant Jake Lang.
He’s part of Mike Rogers’ campaign leadership, and he’s rallying with out-of-state Jan. 6 terrorist Jake Lang tonight in Dearborn.
Will Mike Rogers disavow this? https://t.co/KRbzIEN7aV
— Dr. Abdul El-Sayed (@AbdulElSayed) August 18, 2026
Sewell has endorsed Rogers and serves on the senior leadership team of his campaign’s “Faith Leaders for Mike Rogers” coalition. El-Sayed’s campaign pointed to this and to Sewell hosting “terrorist” Lang at his church over the weekend and asked if Rogers would disavow their connection and activities together.
The disavowal two-step.
In Michigan’s U.S. Senate race, demands for disavowal are becoming increasingly fashionable – though the standard appears to depend on whose political closet is being inspected. And El-Sayed has some political baggage of his own that many say needs a closer look.
El-Sayed campaigned this spring with left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, who infamously said in 2019 that “America deserved 9/11,” a remark Piker later walked back by saying he did not literally mean America deserved the terrorist attacks, but was arguing that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East helped create the conditions that led to them.
El-Sayed himself has explicitly said he does not believe America deserved the terrorist attacks and called Piker’s statement “dumb” but has declined to disavow the man or any of his other controversial statements including Piker urging his audience to kill Republican lawmakers.
Democrat spokesperson Hasan Piker urged his audience to kill Republican lawmakers.
PIKER: “If you cared about Medicare fraud…you would kill Rick Scott.”
This is the SICK LUNATIC who Democrats are campaigning with. pic.twitter.com/vgccGZSbem
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 7, 2026
On disavowing.
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Piker appeared with El-Sayed at an April campaign event where the candidate was asked by a reporter if there were “any views that Hasan holds that you disavow?”
El-Sayed answered in response, “I’m not here to disavow people’s views. I’m here to have a conversation about how to get money out of politics, put money back in pockets, and pass Medicare for all. That’s the conversation that folks are here to listen to…This whole gotcha game, platform policing, cancel culture, I thought we were over it.”
That position is a little harder to square with El-Sayed’s own behavior now that he is publicly demanding that Rogers disavow someone else’s actions and rhetoric – the very kind of “platform policing” and “cancel culture” he dismissed when the scrutiny was directed at his own political associations.
In a recent statement, RNC Spokesman Hunter Lovell highlighted El-Sayed and Piker’s cozy relationship, “Abdul El-Sayed is refusing to walk away from an America-hating terrorist sympathizer because El-Sayed agrees with him. When even his own party is calling on him to cut ties with Hasan Piker, it’s no wonder Democrats remain deeply divided over their radical nominee heading into November.”
