Abdul El-Sayed’s ‘Are you circumcised? blunder – Latest News
There are sentences one expects to listen to in a United States Senate marketing campaign.
And then there are sentences that, till Monday night time, had in all probability by no means been uttered during one.
During a reside interview on his show, Fox News host Jesse Watters requested Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, “So you think it’s OK for a parent to slash his kid’s ding-a-ling off?”
El-Sayed responded with a query of his own: “Are you circumcised?”
Welcome to the 2026 midterms.
It’s solely going to go downhill from right here.
The exchange was typical of the dodge-and-weave strategy El-Sayed used all through the Democratic major race, as he smugly evaded powerful and rational questions on his coverage positions on hot-button points.
El-Sayed wasn’t simply unprepared to reply questions on transgender medical interventions for youngsters; he was equally unable to intelligently talk about Sharia law, reparations, healthcare prices and windmills on Lake Michigan.
His smarmy efficiency has been a reward to Republicans who see within the candidate a darkish flip towards a new technology of extremists operating as Democrats: elites selling socialism whereas remaining deeply disconnected from the issues of on a regular basis Americans.
Fractured voter base
But it’s the problem of transgender “treatment” of youngsters that presents Democrats with a actual risk of coalitional fracture — and El-Sayed’s response to Watters indicated how unprepared they’re for that eventuality.
Consider the voters El-Sayed is courting in Michigan: progressives in faculty cities like Ann Arbor and non secular Muslim voters in locations like Dearborn.
Democrats are relying on the latter to come back by means of for them in November — however exterior of a shared hostility towards Israel, the 2 teams have remarkably little in common.
El-Sayed’s quip evaluating gender-reassignment surgical procedure to circumcision served as a detonation machine between the 2 teams.
Circumcision is, after all, one of the few non secular practices Jews and Muslims emphatically share.
For Jews, brit milah is a 4,000-year-old covenant stretching back to Abraham, historically carried out on a child boy’s eighth day of life.
For Muslims, circumcision is likewise an historical and overwhelmingly noticed non secular custom, rooted within the sunnah and practiced all through the Muslim world.
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This shouldn’t be some obscure bit of comparative faith: It is a defining ritual within the two religion communities whose more and more flamable relationship might help determine the Michigan Senate race.
And someway El-Sayed — who has made his Muslim id an important half of his public biography — selected this follow as his analogy for one thing many non secular Muslims discover morally abhorrent.
That tells voters one thing.
El-Sayed was handed a selection between defending the social values of the non secular group he so conspicuously courts and defending essentially the most doctrinaire place of the progressive motion.
He selected the progressives with out hesitation — and managed, in doing so, to insult Jews as a bonus.
A progressive first
His comparability is patently absurd.
Circumcision removes the foreskin; it doesn’t attempt to remodel a boy into a woman, take away healthy reproductive organs or completely medicalize a baby in pursuit of a totally different sexual id.
The health advantages of circumcision are nicely documented — in contrast to gender reassignment, which comes with a litany of identified and yet-to-be-discovered uncomfortable side effects, together with osteoporosis and infertility only for hormonal “treatments” alone.
El-Sayed is aware of this.
He is a physician.
Yet saying so would have required him to acknowledge a restrict to the progressive orthodoxy on pediatric gender drugs.
So as an alternative, when Watters confronted him with an uncomfortable query, El-Sayed reached for the traditional non secular follow of hundreds of thousands of Jews and Muslims as his rhetorical defend.
Michigan’s non secular voters ought to listen — and Michigan Republicans ought to run the clip relentlessly as a tv advert for the subsequent few months to make sure they do.
The exchange revealed one thing a lot more consequential than whether or not El-Sayed can survive an awkward Fox News interview.
It confirmed which half of his political coalition wins when progressive ideology collides head-on with conventional non secular perception.
On Monday night time, El-Sayed gave Michigan voters the reply.
Bethany Mandel writes and podcasts at The Mom Wars.
