(The Center Square) - The 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks falls during the final sprint for control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections. Some candidates seeking to secure wins in races across the country are under fire for controversial statements about the attacks.
At the forefront of attention across the country is Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist who is seeking to represent Michigan in Congress' upper chamber. El-Sayed recently distanced himself from Hasan Piker, a popular livestreamer who said “America deserved 9/11,” before retracting the statement.
Piker previously campaigned with El-Sayed ahead of the Aug. 4 primary where El-Sayed secured the Democratic nomination over Haley Stevens. El-Sayed will face off against Republican Mike Rogers for the Senate race in November.
In previous social media posts, El-Sayed compared the death tolls from the COVID-19 pandemic to those incurred by the Sept. 11 attacks and called for a greater response to the public health crisis, CBS News reported.
El-Sayed’s campaign has since deleted all social media posts from before July 2023 to prevent posts from being taken out of context, his campaign said.
In another post, from Sept. 11, 2021, the Washington Free Beacon reported that El-Sayed wrote: “Today, I mourn the 3K lives, 6K injuries, & infrastructural devastation in NYC, perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my faith. Tomorrow, I’ll mourn 1M lives, millions of injuries, & infrastructural devastation in 3 countries, perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my country.”
El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to The Center Square’s requests for comment on his past statements surrounding the terrorist attacks.
Proponents for El-Sayed pointed to his comments comparing the terrorist attacks to the pandemic as commonplace for the time. Then New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo directly compared the tragic attack to the pandemic the same month El-Sayed did.
“9/11 was so devastating, so tragic, and then in many ways we lose so many more New Yorkers to this silent killer,” Cuomo said. “There was no explosion but it was a silent explosion that just ripples through society with this same randomness, the same evil that we saw on 9/11.”
While El-Sayed has distanced himself from Piker over comments he made tying American Jews to Israeli aggression, candidates across the country have deepened ties with the controversial streamer.
Melat Kiros, the Democratic nominee in Colorado’s first congressional district, has included Piker in campaign events. Chris Rabb, a democratic socialist and nominee for Pennsylvania’s third congressional district, has also defended Piker in recent media appearances.
Rabb, who is running to represent a district that contains most of Philadelphia, expressed outrage over calls to disavow Piker on his statements about 9/11 and tying American Jews to conflict in Israel.
“This is what the institutionalists are focusing their efforts on now: Disavowing Hasan Piker,” Rabb wrote in a social media post. “Not white Christian nationalists? Not the broligarchs? Not the AI overlords? Nope, the guy encouraging young people to use their collective political power for good.”
“F--- that noise,” Rabb continued.
Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, both democratic socialist congressional candidates in New York City, have faced intense criticism over holding campaign events with Piker. Neither candidate has responded to criticisms of Piker in their campaigns.
