Michigan Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed participated in Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020 while arguing that the protests should not be subjected to the same public-health concerns used to justify restrictions on other mass gatherings.
In a clip provided exclusively to Breitbart News from a 2020 interview with commentator Brian Tyler Cohen, El-Sayed defended the demonstrations and rejected the premise that the protests should be pitted against public-health concerns related to the coronavirus.
“There is no fair pitting of the protests for Black lives against public health,” El-Sayed said.
El-Sayed claimed that systemic racism causes 83,000 deaths in the United States each year and characterized the Black Lives Matter demonstrations themselves as a public-health measure.
“The protesters were out there because we want that to end, and in that respect, this is a public health intervention,” he said.
El-Sayed further argued that treating the fight against COVID-19 as more important than the demonstrations would diminish the value of the black lives for which protesters were advocating.
“Unless you devalue the lives that we’re fighting for, which are Black lives, by saying that they’re somehow less important to focus on than the lives that are lost to COVID-19, which, by the way, are disproportionately Black lives as well, then there is no coherent approach to pitting these protests against public health,” he said.
His defense of the demonstrations came as public officials imposed extensive restrictions on schools, businesses, restaurants, bars, and public gatherings in response to the pandemic.
Just one week after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s (D-MI) statewide lockdown orders took effect in March 2020, El-Sayed described the closure of schools and businesses, cancellation of mass gatherings, and strict social-distancing measures as “necessary” to save lives.
He also supported closing restaurants and bars and raised the possibility of locking down communities experiencing major coronavirus outbreaks.
El-Sayed continued supporting strict coronavirus policies throughout the pandemic. After the Whitmer administration moved away from statewide mask requirements, he advocated for mask mandates covering children as young as two.
He also supported vaccine mandates, criticized police officers who opposed COVID-19 vaccination, and argued that the United States should continue universal masking and testing as states began lifting restrictions and reopening.
El-Sayed simultaneously used the pandemic to promote broader economic and health-care proposals. He argued that the coronavirus had exposed an “epidemic of insecurity” in the United States and called for Medicare for All and a universal basic income.
RNC spokesman Hunter Lovell told Breitbart News, “Like every other socialist, Abdul El-Sayed is a wanna-be dictator who will cross the line just to push a radical agenda. So much for ‘public health’ and so much for ‘Doctor’ El-Sayed.”
In a video posted in 2020, El-Sayed questioned whether police officers “really need to use guns” and whether communities needed “as much of a police force,” while arguing that decisions to prioritize policing over public-school investment in majority-black communities were influenced by systemic racism. Interviews from 2020 and 2021 showed him embracing the defund-the-police movement, including one radio appearance in which he said, “We do need to defund the police.”
El-Sayed has since defended himself against scrutiny over social-media posts supporting the defund-the-police movement that he later deleted. During a July appearance on CNN’s The Arena, he did not directly answer whether he would fund or defund police, instead pointing to his leadership of Wayne County’s Department of Health, Human and Veteran Services, where he said he was responsible for rebuilding a juvenile detention facility and “raised salaries 35% for workers there.” “Judge me by my work, rather than some deleted tweets,” El-Sayed said, later arguing that Michigan voters were more interested in “housing or healthcare or corporate dominance in our politics” than renewed scrutiny of his 2020 remarks.
Newly surfaced audio from June 2020 showed El-Sayed describing defunding police as redirecting resources away from incarceration and police violence and toward education, mental-health services, anti-poverty programs, and community investment. He also wrote in since-deleted posts that major cities spent too much on police departments and too little on schools, health departments, recreation, and housing, and asserted that police had become “standing armies we deploy against our own people.” El-Sayed later told the Detroit News that he “never, never called for defunding,” while his campaign acknowledged that his views had changed since 2020.
The renewed attention comes days before Michigan Democrats choose their nominee for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat in the August 4 primary. The primary has become a contest between the Democrat Party’s establishment and progressive wings. Stevens is backed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) and Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), while El-Sayed has received endorsements from Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and the United Auto Workers. A Fox 2 Detroit online poll conducted after the candidates’ final debate showed 94 percent of participating viewers selecting El-Sayed as the winner, compared with six percent who chose Stevens.
El-Sayed has defended Medicare for All by arguing that lower reimbursement rates for government-funded insurance contribute to unequal treatment of black and Arab patients, while polling has shown him trailing Stevens substantially among black primary voters. Earlier polling showed Stevens leading him by 46 points among black Democrats, while El-Sayed led by 12 points among white voters. After Clyburn criticized the overwhelmingly white crowd at an El-Sayed rally in majority-black Detroit, El-Sayed blamed his standing on outside advertising and promoted endorsements from former Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ), who praised his support for abolishing ICE and Medicare for All.
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