In a 2020 interview, Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed accused President Donald Trump of inciting terrorism, citing a foiled plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
“These are terrorists; we have to call them that. We have to recognize that that is what the face of terrorism looks like right now. We have to step up against it,” El-Sayed said.
El-Sayed drew a pointed analogy between Trump and a radical cleric, referencing the president’s social media activity around the time the plot was uncovered by federal authorities.
“We gotta ask: why are these people getting radicalized? Well, there must be some radical, extremist cleric out there who may be tweeting up a storm about all the things that they think need to be done, like liberating Michigan,” El-Sayed said.
The remarks resurfaced as El-Sayed wages a competitive Democratic primary against Rep. Haley Stevens in Michigan, with the August 4 contest now less than a month away.
The kidnapping plot, which first came to light in 2020, involved a group of men linked to anti-government and militia networks, including a group known as the Wolverine Watchmen, who allegedly planned to abduct Whitmer from her northern Michigan vacation home.
The alleged motive was to force an end to Whitmer’s COVID-19 restrictions, though law enforcement foiled the scheme in October before any attempt was made.
The New York Times later reported that four of the 12 individuals charged in connection with the plot had been government agents or informants, a revelation that prompted widespread accusations of entrapment.
El-Sayed acknowledged that Trump never explicitly called for violence against Whitmer, but pointed to a tweet the president published roughly six months before the plot was uncovered, in which Trump wrote “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” as part of a series of posts targeting Democratic governors’ pandemic restrictions.
According to FBI comments to local media, the plot had actually originated before Trump published that post, a detail that complicates El-Sayed’s central argument about the president’s influence on the conspirators.
El-Sayed nonetheless characterized Trump’s rhetoric as culturally corrosive, arguing it created conditions in which political violence became more likely among susceptible individuals.
“The idea that people would threaten her safety because she was willing to stand up to keep us all healthy is, to me, the example of what the kind of toxicity that we see out of Donald Trump creates,” El-Sayed said.
“And right now, the threat we are seeing is radical, far-right White Supremacy and the terrorists who would undo our society’s basic norms and mores,” El-Sayed added, making clear he views far-right extremism as the dominant security threat facing the country.
El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment on whether his position had shifted in light of the subsequent reporting on government informants embedded within the alleged plot.
El-Sayed and Stevens will face each other in Michigan’s August 4 Democratic primary, with the winner set to advance to what is expected to be a competitive general election contest.
