Abdul El-Sayed unleashes a fiery attack on Donald Trump, Israel and AIPAC, blasting the billions spent on war while arguing that America’s children and working families are paying the price. El-Sayed also vows to take the fight to Trump and his allies in the November midterm elections.
In this explosive speech, El-Sayed takes aim at Trump’s foreign policy, war spending, political influence and the priorities of Washington, declaring: “In November, we fight.”
Watch the full speech and hear El-Sayed’s strongest attacks on Trump, Israel, AIPAC, war spending and U.S. politics ahead of the 2026 midterms.
#AbdulElSayed #DonaldTrump #Trump #AIPAC #Israel #USPolitics #Midterms #2026Midterms #Democrats #MichiganPolitics #TrumpNews #WarSpending #AmericanPolitics #NovemberElections #ElSayed
~HT.318~ED.102~PR.462~GR.506~VG.HM~
In this explosive speech, El-Sayed takes aim at Trump’s foreign policy, war spending, political influence and the priorities of Washington, declaring: “In November, we fight.”
Watch the full speech and hear El-Sayed’s strongest attacks on Trump, Israel, AIPAC, war spending and U.S. politics ahead of the 2026 midterms.
#AbdulElSayed #DonaldTrump #Trump #AIPAC #Israel #USPolitics #Midterms #2026Midterms #Democrats #MichiganPolitics #TrumpNews #WarSpending #AmericanPolitics #NovemberElections #ElSayed
~HT.318~ED.102~PR.462~GR.506~VG.HM~
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NewsTranscript
00:00Donald Trump is not himself the disease of our politics.
00:03Donald Trump is just the worst symptom of the disease of our politics.
00:07The disease is the system that allows big corporations, billionaires, special interests
00:13like AIPAC to buy and sell politicians to do their bidding instead of ours.
00:19Santiago Romero, everybody.
00:27All right.
00:27Money out of?
00:29Politics.
00:30We can do it louder.
00:31Money out of?
00:31Politics.
00:32Money in your?
00:33Medicare for?
00:34Politics.
00:35There it is.
00:36Southwest Detroit.
00:36It is an honor and a privilege to be with you.
00:38My name is Abdul El-Sayed.
00:40I'm clearly running for U.S. Senate because I got a name that is tailor-made for U.S. politics.
00:47But y'all just shouldn't be this hard.
00:49It shouldn't be this hard to afford a second bag of groceries.
00:51It should not be this hard to send your kid to a dentist or to see a doctor.
00:56It should not be this hard to know that the job you've worked yesterday and yesterday
01:01before is going to be there for you tomorrow.
01:03It shouldn't be this hard.
01:05Now, I was never supposed to run for public office.
01:07That is not part of my life's plan.
01:08My parents virtually guaranteed as much when they gave me an 11-letter first name that's
01:12got sounds that come out of parts of people's throats most people don't know they have.
01:16I wanted to be a doctor.
01:18And I wanted to be a doctor because I was raised by my father who's an Egyptian immigrant
01:22and my stepmom Jackie who's a daughter of the American Revolution.
01:25And the place they'd send me every summer was Alexandria, Egypt.
01:29As soon as I was old enough they would ship me abroad to spend time with the wisest most
01:34intelligent person I've ever met in my life and that was my grandmother.
01:36My teta saw it.
01:37Never got to go to school.
01:39She was the 9th of 14.
01:42Raised 6 of the 8 kids to whom she gave birth.
01:442 of them died before their first birthday.
01:46Now, when I would go to Egypt, I'd go 15 hours from where I grew up.
01:50I would cross a life expectancy difference of 10 years.
01:55I didn't have to go 15 hours.
01:56I could go 15 minutes from where I grew up south into the city or north to Pontiac
02:04and either way I'd cross the same 10 year life expectancy gap.
02:08I became a doctor because I wanted to do something about that.
02:11It shouldn't matter the color of your skin.
02:12It shouldn't matter what you do for work or what your parents did for work.
02:15You deserve access to a long healthy life in the richest most powerful country in the world.
02:22So, I went off with that goal, got to go to the University of Michigan.
02:26It was the first time anybody told me I should think about running for office
02:29and the guy kind of knew something about it.
02:30He'd been a former president.
02:31His name was Bill Clinton.
02:32I was the valedictorian in my class and I got to give the student commencement speech.
02:36And it was a great honor except for nobody actually came to listen to me.
02:40They went to go listen to the main speaker who was President Clinton.
02:42I give my speech.
02:45The president gives his speech, calls me out in his speech.
02:48My dad, an immigrant, claps for me for the first time in my whole life.
02:52And then after the speech comes up to me, he's like, son, why are you going to medical school?
02:56First thing that came to my mind was I'm brown and Muslim is what we do.
02:59But also, I love people and I love science and this is how I want to serve.
03:04And he looks at me for a minute and he says, you know, you got a gift for communicating.
03:06Maybe someday you'll run for office.
03:07And I literally laughed in his face.
03:09I was like, Mr. President, did you see my name?
03:11People like me don't get to run for office.
03:13And he kind of chuckled and walked away.
03:16That was 2007.
03:172008, I watched a guy named Barack Hussein Obama run for and win the presidency.
03:24It was the first time I ever saw myself at all reflected in politics.
03:27His dad immigrated from Africa.
03:29My dad immigrated from a different part of Africa.
03:31He had mixed parents.
03:32I was raised by mixed parents.
03:34He had a funny name.
03:35I got a funny name.
03:36He's tall and skinny.
03:37I'm short and thick.
03:39But, I put that away.
03:41I went off to medical school.
03:42Did a PhD in public health.
03:44On the way.
03:45And I'm finally doing the work that doctors do.
03:47Which is about asking and answering two questions.
03:49What's wrong and how can I help?
03:51And I kept realizing that the answer to what was wrong usually had a lot less to do with all
03:56the physiology.
03:56I spent all this time studying a lot more to do with pathologies in our politics.
04:01The air we breathe.
04:02The water we drink.
04:04Whether or not we get to walk in our own communities without being the victim of somebody's violence.
04:08Whether it's a neighbor or the state itself.
04:11Whether or not we can even see a doctor when we get sick.
04:14And I realized I wanted to do something about that.
04:17And so when all of us graduated medical school.
04:20And my classmates did the normal thing and went off to residency.
04:23I decided to go a very different direction.
04:25I went into public health.
04:27I got the opportunity to come back home to Michigan.
04:31To work alongside Detroiters.
04:33To rebuild the health department in the state.
04:35After it had been shut down.
04:37When the city was going through bankruptcy and state takeover.
04:40Back in the emergency management years.
04:41You all remember those doldrums.
04:43Yes.
04:43Boo.
04:45They made the decision to shut down a 185 year old health department.
04:49In a city with a higher infant mortality rate than my father's native Egypt.
04:52And I was hired to rebuild it.
04:55Across my work in public health.
04:57Leading Detroit's health department.
04:59And then Wayne County's department of health, human and veteran services.
05:02We thought outside the box.
05:03We wanted to intervene in those places.
05:07Where health was a means for transmitting intergenerational poverty.
05:10We did things like guarantee every child a free pair of glasses delivered at school within two weeks of a
05:15vision test.
05:16That program, since we brought it to the state of Michigan for the first time in Detroit, has delivered 50
05:20,000 pairs of glasses statewide.
05:26We took on some of the biggest polluters in our state.
05:29I know we're in southwest Detroit.
05:30I don't have to tell you about Marathon Petroleum.
05:34They wanted to raise their emissions of sulfur dioxide, despite the fact that the EPA had said that they were
05:39already in what's called non-attainment, meaning too much sulfur dioxide in the air.
05:43We kept hearing from local community members and we said, you know, we could do something about this.
05:46So we stepped in.
05:47We organized collectively together.
05:49And for the first time, we stood up to them.
05:51Forced them to invest $10 million of their own money to reduce their emissions when they had wanted initially to
05:57increase them.
05:58We put air quality monitors in Wayne County all over the county so you could get real-time information about
06:04the air you were breathing.
06:05After the Flint water crisis, we had every school, daycare, and Head Start in the whole city tested for lead
06:10in the water.
06:11In the first 68 schools we tested, 19 of them tested positive for lead.
06:17Got to help rewrite the state's lead policy after the Flint water crisis.
06:21In Wayne County, we put Narcan, life-saving anti-overdose medication, in 100 locations in vending machines for free.
06:29We built a program to provide health insurance for free for new small businesses.
06:33And when we found out that our county ranked number eight for medical debt nationwide, we realized that we could
06:38do something about it.
06:39We set aside $7 million to eliminate upwards of $700 million of medical debt for 300,000 people.
06:46It is the biggest medical debt erasure in Michigan State history.
06:54Now, I'm never going to forget that day.
06:56Sitting in my office at the Guardian when they froze federal funds.
06:59Y'all remember that?
07:01Early on in the administration feels like 10 years ago was really about like a year ago.
07:05And I'm sitting in my office looking at all the line items in my budget.
07:08They just froze.
07:09WIC.
07:09Food on the table for moms and babies.
07:11Frozen.
07:11Federally qualified health centers.
07:13The last line of healthcare for people who can't get it.
07:15Frozen.
07:16Vaccines.
07:17Frozen.
07:18And I get a notification on my phone that after his long career, our current U.S. Senator Gary Peters
07:23is not seeking re-election.
07:26Now, I got, just then, I get a text message on my phone from your representative, our sister Rashida Thalib.
07:39And she looks at me, she writes me a text.
07:41Habibi, this one looks like yours.
07:43And the reason she said that is because I ran for governor back in 2018.
07:49Now, I was 32 years old.
07:51I'd never run for office in my life.
07:53I had a bad advice from a former president in my head.
07:55Donald Trump had just been elected president.
07:57I said, you know what?
07:57I'll go big or go home.
07:58I went big.
07:59Then I went home.
08:02But in the process, I earned 340,000 votes.
08:05We got outspent seven to one.
08:07But we were two to one more efficient than the current governor.
08:10Three to one more efficient in dollars per vote than the congressman in the place next door.
08:15God knows how he became a congressman.
08:17But more importantly, I said something at the time that I think folks weren't quite ready for
08:22that has never proven more true than it does today.
08:25Donald Trump is not himself the disease of our politics.
08:28Donald Trump is just the worst symptom of the disease of our politics.
08:32The disease is the system that allows big corporations, billionaires, special interests like AIPAC
08:39to buy and sell politicians to do their bidding instead of ours.
08:44We pay more for the stuff we gotta buy, get paid less for the work that we do, and watch
08:49as our tax dollars get misappropriated abroad to drop bombs on other people's kids instead
08:53of to invest in our own kids and their schools and their healthcare.
08:58So if we're serious about defeating Trump, it's not just about beating Trump, it's about beating
09:05the system that created Donald Trump in the first place.
09:08And that's why we're running a campaign to do three simple things.
09:11Number one, we wanna get money out of?
09:13Politics!
09:13Put money in your?
09:14Politics!
09:15Pass Medicare for?
09:16Home!
09:17And look, here's the thing about it.
09:19I wanna talk a little bit about what this means.
09:23Just today, we got a notification that AIPAC just put in a $3.8 million ad buy for the
09:32next two weeks alone.
09:34$3.8 million of the estimated $30 million that they are going to spend specifically to
09:42beat me.
09:43I happen to believe that that kind of electioneering is anti-democratic and should be illegal.
09:49That's right.
09:50I'm the only candidate in my race who's never taken a dime from a corporation to run a campaign
09:54and never will.
09:57And so believe you me when I tell you that we are going to make corporate contributions
10:02to campaigns illegal and we're going to end the whole system of dark money.
10:06The super PACs, the 501C4s, the 527s that corrupt our politics in the first place.
10:12That's what it means to get money out of politics.
10:15I gotta talk about putting money in your pocket.
10:18We've watched as big corporations buy each other up, squeeze other ones out.
10:22They tell us that we live in capitalism.
10:24I happen to study capitalism.
10:26And let me tell you what the biggest danger to capitalism has always been.
10:29It's not government regulation.
10:30The biggest danger to capitalism is monopoly.
10:33And we are living functionally under monopolies of all sorts.
10:36It's the reason they can just raise our prices.
10:39But we have policy on the books.
10:41We have a whole agency in the Federal Trade Commission that used to be led by the most effective FTC
10:46chair in a century,
10:47Lena Khan, where we need to stand up and enforce antitrust regulation.
10:54That is one of the most important things we can do.
10:56I just heard over the last two months since we've been fighting this illegal, unjustifiable, immoral war, Shell Corporation has
11:06made record profits.
11:08Absolutely.
11:09Because they operate in what is an oligopoly and together they can collude to raise our prices.
11:16We pay, what, five bucks a gallon now with the tank?
11:18Five bucks?
11:19Part of that is the dumbass war we're fighting.
11:21But part of that is the way corporations are profiteering off of that exact same war.
11:24That ought to be illegal.
11:26The FTC can do something about it.
11:27And we're going to stand up to enforce antitrust policy in this country again.
11:35I also know that we live in the heart of union country.
11:38Unions built the middle class.
11:40They built the 40 hour work week.
11:41They built the fact that our kids go to schools instead of going to work.
11:46And it's no coincidence that we live in an era of near all time low union membership and near all
11:52time high billionaire wealth.
11:55We've got to stand up for corporations.
11:57That means passing the PRO Act and that means normalizing unions to form and build in sectors across American life.
12:04Guys, you got to clap for unions.
12:06I'm so sorry.
12:06But hey, most important means to affordable life that we have in front of us.
12:12And on the topic of billionaires, I happen to believe that we ought to be charging billionaires and taxing their
12:18wealth.
12:20Because here's the thing about it.
12:22If you're a billionaire and I tax you at 8%, you know what you still are?
12:26A billionaire.
12:26Still a billionaire.
12:28You're kids, kids, kids, kids, kids.
12:29I'm going to be rich.
12:31If you take a billion dollars, you know how much a billion dollars makes in the market?
12:3510%.
12:35So if you tax somebody at 8%, guess what?
12:37They're still making 2%.
12:38You know what 2% of a billion is?
12:40$20 million for doing jack shit.
12:43So I think you're going to be okay.
12:45All these billionaires getting so, so sad about us taxing wealth.
12:49I'm so sorry.
12:50You're doing just fine.
12:51You already won at capitalism.
12:53I think it is high past time for everybody else to be able to play too.
13:03And then there's the matter of where we spend our tax dollars.
13:09$3 billion every single year to subsidize a country committing apartheid, at minimum genocide, over the past two years and
13:18counting.
13:19Money that should have been spent on our kids and their schools and their healthcare being used to buy bombs
13:24and tanks for foreign countries.
13:25I think unconditional foreign military aid should be illegal.
13:28We need to stop doing it.
13:30And while we're at it, I do not believe we should be selling weapons to a country that is violating
13:34human rights law.
13:42And then you ask yourself, why are we at war?
13:45Well, who benefits from this war?
13:49The prime minister of a foreign government has been trying to get this war fought for 40 years.
13:54And he finally found a dumb ass willing to fight it for him.
13:59Who benefits?
14:00Why are we fighting this?
14:01Well, Raytheon benefits.
14:02Northrop Grumman benefits.
14:04General Dynamic Systems benefits.
14:06Palantir benefits.
14:07And the government of Israel benefits.
14:09And so it is high past time for us to recognize that morals ought to mean something.
14:14We should not be fighting illegal, unjustifiable wars.
14:16And that's not just because of procedural issues.
14:18It's not just because they didn't get war authorization from Congress because it's an illegal and unjustifiable war.
14:23It is because this is a wrong war we never should have fought.
14:26It is time for us to keep our money here rather than spending $25 billion there.
14:31We could spend $25 billion here and invest in our kids here and our health care here and our education
14:36system here and our infrastructure here.
14:42And while we're on the topic of where we spend our tax dollars, $185 billion for ICE.
14:50Now, maybe it's because I've actually run government agencies before.
14:54But have you ever thought through, like, how would you reform or retrain an agency whose response to shooting somebody
15:00in the back of the head or the face is to say, one of ours, all of yours?
15:06They want to tell us that ICE is about immigration.
15:10They want to tell us that ICE is about the southern border.
15:12Now, I went to Minneapolis at the height of Project Metro Search.
15:15I wanted to see for myself what it looks like when our government lays a siege to a city in
15:21its own country.
15:22And what I saw was harrowing.
15:24But I also noticed something.
15:25I went to public schools and I learned maps.
15:27And I thought to myself, man, it's negative two degrees outside.
15:29I must not be on the southern border.
15:31What the hell does Minneapolis have to do with the southern border?
15:34Absolutely nothing.
15:35ICE is not about immigration.
15:37ICE is not about the southern border.
15:38We can enforce immigration policies without shooting people in the back of the head or the face.
15:42Without covering your face and using weapons of war to do it.
15:45So there is no, there is no reforming this agency.
15:50There is no retraining these workers.
15:53If you think you can use a kid as bait, you do not deserve a job in the federal government.
16:01So ICE can't be reformed.
16:03ICE can't be retrained.
16:04ICE has to be abolished.
16:08And then lastly, when we take our tax dollars back,
16:12we got an opportunity to think beyond the broke health care system they tell us is the best we can
16:18do.
16:19Because y'all, we don't have to go very far to a place where they spend half as much money
16:22and everybody gets health care.
16:24I went to Windsor to interview people about what they do with their medical debt.
16:27You should have seen the way they looked at me.
16:28They're like, what?
16:29I'm like medical debt.
16:31They're like, what's that?
16:31I was like, you know, the debt you get because you got health care?
16:34They're like, I'm so sorry.
16:35Like, we don't have that here.
16:37I was like, wait, why?
16:38They're like, because we provide health care for every single person.
16:45I'm like, but what about your waiting lines?
16:46They're like, no, no, I'm good.
16:48I've never had the waiting line.
16:49I'm like, really?
16:50You know what the average wait time for a cardiologist in America is?
16:54Two and a half months.
16:57Now, I'm a doctor.
16:58I can tell you this.
16:59Nobody tells you you need to see a cardiologist in two and a half months.
17:02When they tell you you need to see a cardiologist, there's like two and a half hours, at most, two
17:05and a half days.
17:07Two and a half months.
17:08In the richest, most powerful country in the world where we spend 20% of our entire GDP on health
17:13care.
17:14So in the richest, most powerful country in the world, it is high past time for us to abolish medical
17:19debt
17:19and finally do the work of guaranteeing health care through Medicare for all.
17:26Now, I'm getting the hook.
17:30I know I'm not supposed to run for office.
17:32I get it.
17:33I'm the wrong color.
17:35I pray the wrong way.
17:37I got a foreign name.
17:39I literally told the president as much at my own college graduation.
17:42I understand.
17:43But you know what I'm not going to do?
17:45I'm not going to stand here and tell you what you cannot have and should not fight for.
17:49I'm not going to tell you that the best use of your U.S. Senate seat is to hold on
17:53to it to do exactly the same thing that the other guy would have done.
17:57I'm not going to tell you that we need to keep playing not to lose or that you got to
18:01wait two more years or four more years.
18:03Because guess what?
18:04Those two years and four years never come.
18:06The question for us is bigger than this seat.
18:08It is about what we want out of our democracy in the first place.
18:11So if everything is working just fine for you, I'm not your guy.
18:14Do not vote for me.
18:15But if you believe that you deserve health care, if you believe that your tax dollars ought to be spent
18:19on you,
18:20if you believe that corporations should not have a bigger say in our politics than you do, then maybe I
18:25am.
18:29I'm going to finish here.
18:32Honestly, it's personal, y'all.
18:33Like, I have two little girls at home.
18:35They're eight and three.
18:37Ethnically half Egyptian like me, ethnically half Indian like their mom where they get their looks, thank God.
18:42A hundred percent American.
18:44And those little girls are growing up with fewer rights in the country of their birth than their grandparents had
18:52when they immigrated here 50 years ago.
18:57And those grandparents, they took a bet on a set of ideals.
19:00We hold these truths to be self-evident.
19:02That all men, should say people, are created equal.
19:04Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
19:06And I know those are lofty ideals and we've never quite gotten there.
19:10But I also know we have not moved backwards as fast.
19:15All of us have people to whom we will hand this place off.
19:19And we owe them to look them in the eye when we do and to tell them what we did
19:24when democracy itself was on the line.
19:27Who we were and what we fought for.
19:31And so as we work together moving forward, I want you to think about those people and what we owe
19:36them.
19:38Again, it's not about how much time you have.
19:40It's about how much of yourself you put into your time.
19:43And we're building a movement that is about the ideals of this place, about honoring them.
19:48Not just for ourselves, but for the people we leave this place behind to.
19:53So I'm so deeply grateful to all of you for being here today.
19:56So deeply grateful for the work that you've already done, for the work that you will do.
19:59I'm asking you to put yourself into your time.
20:02We got three months left.
20:04On August 4th, we vote.
20:06On November 3rd, we vote again.
20:08And I'm hoping that leaving here today, that you will commit to putting yourself into our democracy.
20:14To having the conversations with folks about what we can yet fight for.
20:19About deciding to go out into your community and knock doors or make phone calls.
20:25Help us.
20:26Help us.
20:28Because all we love is on the line.
20:30Thank you so much.
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