El-Sayed Called On Egyptian President To ‘Purge the Media’

The Democrats’ Islamist communist candidate for Senate in swing state Michigan earlier this week snidely criticized President Donald Trump’s decision to take away White House passes from leftist propaganda outlets — MS Now, CNN, and Politico. 

“May I just say, it’s nice to see MSNow and CNN covering the news,” Abdul El-Sayed, the Eddie Haskell of Muslim politicians, told reporters during a campaign stop with the Democratic Party’s failed replacement presidential candidate, Kamala Harris. “That’s what you do, it’s great.”

“You are welcome here anytime to cover news. I’m grateful that you do that. I mean, there are certain people who occupy certain offices that are too cowardly to take your questions,” the smarmy public health bureaucrat and failed former candidate for governor added in a not-so-subtle jab at the president. 

He was more direct in another exchange with the media, asserting that “Trump hates the idea of democracy.” 

“That’s why he denies elections and is interfering with the freedom of the press,” El-Sayed told Deadline Detroit. 

That’s an interesting criticism from a guy who reportedly once urged the Muslim Brotherhood to “purge” news outlets and law enforcement in Egypt. The Trump administration has designated the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization.  

“Purge the Media’

As The Washington Free Beacon reported on Wednesday, the “demand was made in an Arabic-language statement on Al-Ahram Gate, an Egyptian news portal.” It was signed by 46 “leaders of the Egyptian community” living in the U.S., “one of whom was El-Sayed, who was born in Michigan to Egyptian immigrants.”

“We, leaders of the Egyptian community, support the revolutionary decisions taken by the president, and we call on him to purge the media and the police as quickly as possible,” states the letter published in 2012 after Islamist Mohamed Morsi, who was Egypt’s president at the time, grabbed sweeping powers to quell growing unrest. 

Laura Loomer first reported on the declaration in April. 

The Free Beacon noted that the letter remains online, but the link appears to have been removed. As of late Wednesday, the link produced an error message. Loomer, however, included the letter in her original post. 

It appears the signers of the declaration got their wish. Morsi and his “brothers” cracked down on critics, harassing and suppressing journalists. Some stood trial, others were attacked in the street, according to media accounts at the time. Some were targeted for the crime of “insulting Islam.”

“This is a troubling backward step that Egypt’s newly elected President Mohamed Morsi should not be taking,” Robert Mahoney, Deputy Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in an Aug. 16, 2012 report. “We urge President Morsi to reverse this course immediately and demonstrate his commitment to press freedom.”

El-Sayed wrote in support of the Muslim Brotherhood before the group rode Morsi to power.  In a HuffPost op-ed amid the mass protests of the so-called Egyptian Spring, the Islamist argued that the U.S. had nothing to fear from the group that would ultimately be designated a terrorist group by the U.S.

Obama Wasn’t ‘Losing a Lot of Sleep’

Revoking the White House press credentials of three propaganda-pushing corporate media outlets is hardly the journalism “purge” that El-Sayed signed on to. In the first place, MS Now, CNN, and Politico have the right of redress. They are exercising it, almost immediately filing a lawsuit on First Amendment grounds. Egyptian journalists didn’t enjoy the same protection then — or now. 

In a court filing, the Department of Justice alleges that MS Now, CNN, and Politico “failed to maintain basic minimum ‘standards of professionalism and decorum expected of those given access to the White House Complex,’” including “publishing sensitive or classified information.” In asking a D.C. court to deny the corporate outlets’ motion seeking to enjoin the revocations, the DOJ argues that Trump’s actions weren’t retaliatory “because the government would have taken the same action anyway, notwithstanding Plaintiffs’ speech criticizing the President — indeed, the President has not revoked access to other outlets that have equally criticized the President.”

Trump also is not the first U.S. president to take news organizations to task for what they believed to be naked bias and lies. 

Former President Barrack Obama and his administration warmly embraced the Muslim Brotherhood. This week, Obama, with a case of the vapors, said his “imagination could not foresee some of the stuff that is going on right now.”

“I’m trying to think what would have happened if I had said, you know what, Fox News, you’re out of here! It’s unimaginable!” said the president who led the Russiagate soft coup against an incoming administration. He made his remarks during a discussion at Colgate University. 

 As The New York Post reported, Obama’s handlers tried to block Fox News’ pool reporters from interviewing an administration official. His White House comms director declared the network was “the source and the outlet for Republican Party talking points,” Obama told his friends at NBC News that he wasn’t “losing a lot of sleep” over the move to block Fox. His Justice Department spied on journalists, for crying out loud. 

Obama’s water carriers, CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC, protested the White House move — as Fox is doing with Trump’s ban. As The Post understandably notes, the Biden administration “also repeatedly cut the New York Post out of access to various events and targeted other conservative outlets at times as well.” Joe Biden and his Big Tech pals teamed up to censor The Federalist and The Daily Wire in “one of the most audacious, manipulative, secretive, and gravest abuses of power and infringements of First Amendment rights by the federal government in American history,” according to a lawsuit.

Selective Outrage

After years of “resistance-style” narrative spinning on a duly-elected president — the Russia collusion hoax, covering for a cognitively compromised Biden and his morally bankrupt son, and fanning the flames of Trump Derangement Syndrome — the accomplice media have shown themselves to be more than irresponsible.

Which brings us back to El-Sayed and his support for cracking down on journalists critical to the Muslim Brotherhood regime that briefly controlled Egypt. 

You won’t find much reporting about that 2012 letter from the usual suspects in the “resistance press, despite El-Sayed’s criticisms of Trump this week. They’re not all that interested, it seems, in recent reports that “Egyptian journalists are sounding alarms about Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate.”

If anything, news organizations have peddled faulty “factchecks” insisting that there’s nothing to see here. A Sept. 3 headline in Bridge Michigan declares, “No evidence Abdul El-Sayed ‘pledged support’ to Muslim Brotherhood.” The piece attempts to pick apart some statements by El-Sayed’s Republican opponent Mike Rogers and some GOP allies. 

The “fact-check” asserts that “El-Sayed did not pledge support for the Muslim Brotherhood, as detractors claim.” 

“Nor did he do so in a 2012 group letter defending then-Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, who was backed by the Muslim Brotherhood and had been elected earlier that year,” the article asserts. (Note the link in the story is no longer active). 

“Defending” is supporting. Supporting is Supporting. As the communique states, “We, leaders of the Egyptian community, support the revolutionary decisions taken by the president …” Morsi was elected and in power because of the Muslim Brotherhood. He was (he’s dead now) chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party. The letter spells out support for the regime, which is the Muslim Brotherhood regime. And that includes support for crushing journalists critical of that regime, a point the publication conveniently left out of its “fact-check.” 

Beyond the disingenuous assertions, Bridge Michigan rolls out corporate media’s standard line of defense against criticism of Muslim political candidates — that they are “faith-based attacks.” The article cites the highly suspect Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the USA v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development case. The case involved financing of terrorism organization Hamas. 

Islamic groups and religious leaders have seen a significant uptick in harassment and threats of violence since El-Sayed’s nomination, CAIR’s Amy V. Doukoure told the publication. 

“What would help de-escalate this is for mainstream politicians to call it what it is, which is blatant un-American racism and xenophobia and Islamophobia,” Doukoure said. 

Is it Islamophobia to report that the Democrat who wants to be Michigan’s next U.S. senator once cheered on an oppressive Islamist regime’s assault on the press? 

No. 

It’s journalism — something El-Sayed selectively defends. 

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.