Abdul El-Sayed Draws Criticism Over JFK Comparison
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What happened
Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed compared questions about his background to the religious scrutiny John F. Kennedy faced in 1960, doing so twice within a matter of days. In a live interview with MS NOW correspondent Ali Velshi, El-Sayed was asked for his response to questions about the Muslim Brotherhood, terrorism, and radical Islamism. He said the questions were meant to insinuate dual loyalties and cited Kennedy being asked whether his allegiance would be to the Constitution or to the Pope. Conservative commentators then publicly challenged the analogy.
ONE-SIDED THIS WEEK.
Only right-leaning outlets have covered this story in the last two days;
The Hill reported it on 2026-10-18.
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Left-leaning coverage has not reported Abdul El-Sayed's comparison of himself to John F. Kennedy, so readers on that side would not know the remark was made or that it drew fire. Right-leaning coverage says the Michigan Senate candidate invoked Kennedy when asked about the Muslim Brotherhood and terrorism and treated the question as an insinuation of dual loyalties. Alleged family and donor ties to terrorism appear in Daily Wire as the reason that parallel does not hold.
Right-leaning outlets do not tell the same story. Daily Wire leads with those family and donor claims. National Review leads with the claim that Islam may inform the candidate in a way Kennedy's Catholicism did not, and does not mention those relatives.
Has El-Sayed answered the specific family and donor allegations, or only the accusation of religious bias?
Bottom line
Daily Wire is calling El-Sayed's JFK comparison a "body shield" for terrorism-tie questions, and left-leaning outlets have not reported the comparison at all.
The receipts — 2 facts one side's coverage lacks
- El-Sayed compared questions about the Muslim Brotherhood and terrorism to JFK being asked whether his allegiance was to the Constitution or to the Pope
- El-Sayed's biological mother worked for an organization that financed terrorism, including wiring funds to Osama bin Laden before September 11
The Right View
Daily Wire and National Review frame El-Sayed’s JFK comparison as historically inapt and a deflection from what they call legitimate questions about extremism, not religious bigotry. Daily Wire’s Ashley McGuire wrote that equating 1960s anti-Catholic bias with concerns about a terrorist network is offensive, and listed claimed ties: that El-Sayed’s biological mother worked for an organization that financed terrorism and wired funds to Osama bin Laden before September 11; that a half-sister said the family had long been Muslim Brotherhood; that a sister-in-law appeared on a terrorist watch list; that a father-in-law has Brotherhood ties; that El-Sayed supported a Muslim Brotherhood candidate in Egypt and called for a purge of media and police; that Brotherhood accounts celebrated his primary win; and that he accepted money from Brotherhood-linked and other alleged terrorist-affiliated donors, one of whom praised Hamas’s October 7 attack. The same piece cited a town hall in which El-Sayed declined to disavow the Muslim Brotherhood and a Jesse Watters exchange in which he compared questions about sharia law to canon law. National Review argued Catholicism did not shape Kennedy’s politics the way Islam may inform El-Sayed’s, and that Kennedy did not invoke faith to distract from extremism around him.
Our Take (balanced)
The core event is substantive and checkable: El-Sayed made the JFK comparison on live television, named the dual-loyalty charge, and had used the same analogy days earlier. The surrounding package of family, financial, and ideological ties names specific people and acts, but the coverage provided does not include primary documents, filings, or independent records; those items remain alleged until corroborated. Established is the on-air analogy and El-Sayed’s refusal, in the cited town-hall clip, to disavow the Muslim Brotherhood. Not established here are the terrorism-financing, watch-list, donation, and family-membership claims. No left-leaning outlet has reported this. Watch for campaign-finance records, contemporaneous employment or NGO documents, official list placements, El-Sayed’s point-by-point response, and whether other outlets report either the comparison or the underlying allegations.
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