KIND OF AN ODD APPROACH

Quick question for you. How hard is it to condemn a regime your own country is at war with? For one Senate nominee in Michigan, apparently harder than condemning an ally. Take the red pill with me this morning, and stick around, because his Republican opponent gets his turn too.

“Kind of an odd approach”

ABC News Live anchor Linsey Davis asked Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic nominee for Senate, a simple question in an interview that aired Monday: “Do you condemn the current Iranian regime?”

Per the Breitbart transcript of the exchange, he answered, “They’ve engaged in horrific acts. There’s no question about that,” then pivoted to the Obama-era nuclear deal and the war. Davis tried again: “If it’s yes or no, you do condemn the current Iranian regime?” His answer: “I condemn a lot of their action.”

And then the line that will follow him to Election Day: “I just think this idea of like, condemn or not condemn, right? Is kind of an odd approach.”

ABC News reported the same exchange and noted he had already been criticized after a town hall last month for not directly answering whether he condemned Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. KIND OF AN ODD APPROACH is a strange way to describe a yes-or-no question you’ve now been asked twice.

Some condemnations come easy

Here’s the thing. In the very same answer, El-Sayed found plenty that was easy to condemn. “I condemned the genocide that Israel has done. I condemned the apartheid, too.” He condemned “the Saudi human rights abuses” and said the UAE is “doing genocide in Sudan.” He told ABC that “Israel is not actually our friend.”

So the scorecard reads: Israel, condemned. Saudi Arabia, condemned. The UAE, condemned. Iran, a country he himself called “an enemy combatant in this war,” gets “a lot of their action” and a seminar on framing. Condemnation isn’t an odd approach for El-Sayed. He uses it all the time. Just not on the one government the U.S. is at war with.

It’s not a one-off, either. Mediaite notes that in a debate with Republican Mike Rogers, he refused to say whether Israel or Iran was the greater threat to the U.S.

Abdul El-Sayed meets voters at Michigan Technological University, Oct. 22, 2025. Credit: Conlan Houston, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The fair part

To be fair, his argument isn’t crazy. He said the nuclear deal had “contained the nuclear threat,” that “we should not have gone to war in the first place,” and that the war has had shifting aims. He’s not alone in souring on it: Reuters reports voter frustration over the Iran war has Republicans on defense even in Kansas. Diplomacy does mean dealing with people you can’t stand.

But here’s the catch. You can condemn a regime and still negotiate with it. The Obama administration he holds up as the model negotiated that deal while Iran sat on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, where it has been since Jan. 19, 1984. Saying “yes, I condemn them” never stopped anybody from sitting down at a table.

Subscribe now

Why it matters in Michigan

This isn’t a safe seat. ABC cites a late-September Fox News poll with El-Sayed at 50% and Rogers at 49%. The seat belongs to retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, and CNN reports Democrats need a net four-seat gain to win the Senate. El-Sayed beat Rep. Haley Stevens in the August primary by about a point, and CNN says Democrats are worried about slippage with Black voters, with one prominent Black leader calling the race “far closer than it should” be. Barack Obama is due in Detroit on Saturday to help.

In a race decided by a point, “kind of an odd approach” is an attack ad Rogers didn’t have to write. Democrats who wanted this seat to be about gas prices just watched their nominee make it about Iran.

The Michigan State Capitol in Lansing. Michigan’s open Senate seat could decide control of the chamber. Credit: w_lemay, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Now, Mr. Rogers

Republicans, don’t take a victory lap. Your nominee has his own audio problem. Raw Story, citing the Detroit Metro Times, reports that in July 2025 Rogers told Fox’s Brian Kilmeade that when releasing the Epstein files, “you also have to protect somebody who got on an airplane and rode with him.” He added that people “who just want to be after Trump are just going to beat this drum all day long.” Michigan Democrats resurfaced the clip Tuesday.

The Metro Times also found that at least seven donors named in the released files have given nearly $4.7 million to Rogers’ campaign and groups backing him, most of it from Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, who faces no allegations of wrongdoing tied to Epstein. Rogers’ campaign called the insinuation “disgusting.” We wrote about the Epstein passenger list problem in THE CLIENT LIST NOBODY READ.

Mike Rogers, Michigan’s Republican Senate nominee, at a Hudson Institute panel in 2015. Credit: Hudson Institute, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

And there’s the name game. ABC reports Trump repeatedly calls El-Sayed by his middle name, “Mohammed,” and CNN reports Rogers has tried to connect him to the Muslim Brotherhood, which El-Sayed has denounced. Guilt by middle name is not a foreign policy either. Grill him on Iran. That’s fair game. His name isn’t.

Both costumes

The boring standard: if you can call an ally’s war a genocide, you can say yes or no about a regime your country is fighting. If you want the Epstein files out, you don’t get to carve out the passengers. And nobody should campaign on a candidate’s middle name.

We’ve covered this race before in PRETEND I’M ON THE BALLOT, and the Iran war politics in BE CAREFUL, REPUBLICANS. Michigan voters can see who funds their delegation on our Michigan Money Map. Everyone else, find your race on the Money Map and electoral map.

Receipts

• Breitbart transcript of the ABC News Live interview, Oct. 20, 2026. Davis’s questions; “kind of an odd approach”; Israel, Saudi and UAE lines; “enemy combatant.”
• ABC News, Oct. 20, 2026. “I condemn a lot of their action”; town hall criticism; “Israel is not actually our friend”; Fox poll 50% to 49%; Trump’s “Mohammed” attacks.
• Mediaite, Oct. 20, 2026. Debate refusal on Israel versus Iran.
• CNN, Oct. 20, 2026. Peters seat; net four seats; primary margin; Black voter concerns; Obama visit; Muslim Brotherhood attacks.
• U.S. State Department, State Sponsors of Terrorism. Iran designated Jan. 19, 1984.
• Reuters via Yahoo News, Oct. 20, 2026. Voter frustration over the Iran war in red states.
• Raw Story, Oct. 20, 2026. Rogers’ Kilmeade remarks via the Detroit Metro Times; donor totals; campaign response.
• Earlier Hypocrisy Democracy: PRETEND I’M ON THE BALLOT; BE CAREFUL, REPUBLICANS; THE CLIENT LIST NOBODY READ. Reader tools: Michigan Money Map; Money Map and electoral map.

Subscribe now

Upgrade

Upgrade to paid

Paid readers pick 1 meme sticker from the Etsy shop HypocrisyDemocracy, plus quarterly sticker packs, discounts and bonus content.

If you haven’t subscribed, now’s a good time. Everything here stays free, always. But pieces like this take days of research, writing, and fact checking, and if you’d like to support that work, paid subscriptions are there. Thank you for your support!

Thanks for reading, sharing, and commenting.

Subscribe. Donate. hypocrisydemocracy.net. Hypocrisydemocracy@pm.me.

Originally published on Substack.