I think Democrat Senate candidate for Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, is a small man, and not just in a physical sense.
He seems to have a never-ending desire to sound tough or talk smack about people, maybe to prove himself. But it just makes him sound insecure.
He doesn't just have small-man syndrome when it comes to his Republican political opponents; he's apparently also unhappy with liberals like Bill Maher who might dare to be critical of him.
El-Sayed claimed in a new interview with Chuck Todd on Noosphere that Bill Maher has said “terrible things about people like me.” What is he even talking about?
EXCLUSIVE: Abdul El-Sayed tells @ChuckTodd he would go on Bill Maher’s show despite the “terrible things Bill Maher has said about people like me.”@AbdulElSayed: “I wanna give people the image of watching him get his ass whooped on his own show by a guy who prays like I do.”… pic.twitter.com/ai4pg1PY0f
— Noosphere (@noosphereapp) September 25, 2026
He whined that people were still willing to go on Maher's show "despite him saying deeply terrible things."
What things? Todd doesn't push back on that.
Yeah, no, nothing equivalent to the "deeply terrible things" El-Sayed's buddy Hasan Piker has said.
But El-Sayed couldn't even get the channel that Maher appears on right - he's not on Comedy Central anymore. (For anyone who's curious, Politically Incorrect left the cable network's airwaves in late 1996; Maher next moved his show to ABC until the summer of 2002.) Talk about out of touch.
Then El-Sayed did that smack-talk thing: “I wanna give people the image of watching him get his ass whooped on his own show by a guy who prays like I do.” So he's accusing Maher of being a bigot to undercut what Maher has to say about him?
He said he also wanted to convince the people who watch Maher's show that a lot of the things Maher says are "just not viable." Yet Maher's thoughts are a heck of a lot more "viable" than those of El-Sayed.
He doubtless thinks he can just throw out his slick shtick, and he'll "whoop" Maher. He's more than a little full of himself.
But as we saw during the University of Michigan town hall, while he certainly is slick, he gets nailed when you make him have to go anywhere beyond the surface and actually justify himself, as a young student did when he asked the Democrat candidate to condemn the Iranian regime. El-Sayed failed to do so.
Maher indicated he would have him on. Maher shot down El-Sayed's silly crutch: "It's not 'people like you'."
Maher said he talks about Islam; it's never personal or about race, but about ideas. "I have different views on how women should be treated," Maher said. But he added he hoped they would have a discussion.
Maher has also called out the extreme Left, the socialists and the Communists, in the Democrat Party. So he would likely put El-Sayed over a grill on those issues as well. While he's liberal, Maher isn't for radical leftists, and he's willing to praise President Donald Trump when he thinks he's done good things, like helping to bring about a big reduction in crime nationally.
I think El-Sayed is blowing smoke and won't do Maher's show. He wants to throw that thought out there to sound tough, but he knows that Maher is one who might make him look silly (more silly than he's already been made to look).
So we shall see, because that would be great fun if El-Sayed did do the interview, to see how he crashes and burns.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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