Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed likened his past criticism of former President Barack Obama to second-guessing a parent during a Meet the Press interview Sunday, weeks before the two are set to campaign together in Detroit.
NBC moderator Kristen Welker asked El-Sayed whether he still sees Obama’s presidency as a failure. In a 2012 HuffPost essay, El-Sayed wrote that Obama “was not the right choice” and that “the list of his failures goes on.”
El-Sayed said Obama “was handed a really difficult set of circumstances, and he did his best.” He then asked Welker whether her parents were still living. She said they were.
“I wouldn’t have my life but for my dad’s efforts,” El-Sayed said. “At the same time, there’s a lot of things about my dad I would do differently, right?”
In hindsight, El-Sayed said, Obama looks like “a really capable leader,” and called the former president a “mentor.”
El-Sayed has criticized Obama repeatedly over the years. At a 2020 University of Chicago panel, he said the country was not “better off” eight years after Obama’s election, “as someone who loves him deeply.” In a 2017 Vox interview, he said he disagreed with Obama on “a lot of things.”
His campaign said the earlier remarks do not reflect hostility toward Obama. El-Sayed used a similar line in an Instagram video this week: “Do you love your dad? Do you agree with everything your dad has ever done?”
Obama is scheduled to appear with El-Sayed and gubernatorial nominee Jocelyn Benson on October 24, the day in-person voting begins in Michigan. El-Sayed faces Republican Mike Rogers in the November 3 election. A YouGov poll this month had El-Sayed ahead 49% to 48%, and the two traded sharp attacks in a debate Thursday in Grand Rapids.
El-Sayed also again expressed regret in the interview for his March remarks after the Temple Israel synagogue attack, saying he wishes he had “thought twice” before making them.
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