Leaked audio from a staff meeting captured Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Michigan, strategizing about how to address the death of former Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei, who was killed during U.S. and Israel's military action in the country.
The recording, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, reveals El-Sayed explicitly coaching his team to avoid any public comment on the Iranian dictator's demise.
His reasoning was striking in its candor:
"I also want to remind you guys that there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad today. So, like, I just don't want to comment on Khamenei at all. Like, I don't think it's worth even touching that."
Sad. About the death of the Supreme Leader of Iran. And a man who wants to represent Michigan in the United States Senate thought the appropriate response was silence, calibrated to protect those sympathies.
The audio didn't stop at Khamenei. El-Sayed also laid out his broader messaging strategy, and it tells you everything about how the progressive wing of the Democratic Party views American foreign policy. Rather than address the geopolitical reality of Iran's leadership being dismantled, El-Sayed pivoted to attacking the president: "I'm just gonna go straight to pedophilia, frankly."
"I'll just be like, 'Pedophile president decides that he doesn't like the front page news, so he decides to take us into another war.'"
So to be clear: the strategy from a man seeking one of the most powerful legislative seats in the country was to deflect from a dead terror-sponsoring dictator by lobbing vulgar accusations at the president. No mention of the Americans who have died at the hands of Iranian proxies. No acknowledgment of the threat Iran has posed to the region and the world. Just smears and silence, in that order.
Michigan Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers wasted no time drawing the contrast. He told Fox News Digital: "Rather than empathize with the 140 kids whose lives were threatened in the Michigan synagogue attack, the thousands of Americans murdered by Iran, or the victims of Iran-sponsored terrorism around the world, he instead, chooses to empathize with the terrorists who committed these vile acts."
Rogers also noted that El-Sayed has campaigned "with a known antisemite who claimed 'America deserved 9/11,'" adding that each time "you think the Democrats can't get lower, they pick up the shovel and keep digging."
GOP Sen. Bernie Moreno offered a broader observation on the state of the Democratic bench:
"Democrats have an abundance of riches to choose from when selecting which one of their Senate candidates is the craziest, most radical, and most anti-American."
Fox News radio political analyst Josh Kraushaar wrote on X that the audio "speaks volumes about the level of extremism within the El-Sayed coalition." Conservative communicator Steve Guest called it "beyond parody." GOP adviser Nathan Brand kept it simple: "Well this is insane."
The most revealing line on the tape isn't the crude presidential attack. It's the Dearborn comment. El-Sayed didn't say people in Dearborn were confused, or processing the news, or worried about escalation. He said they were "sad." About Khamenei.
This is the corner the Democratic Party has painted itself into. Years of coalition arithmetic have produced candidates who cannot bring themselves to welcome the removal of one of the world's most dangerous authoritarians because a segment of their voter base mourns him. The political calculation overrides the moral one every single time.
A normal Senate candidate, from either party, would have issued a statement acknowledging that the world is safer with one fewer state sponsor of terror at the helm. That's not a hawkish position. It's a baseline one. El-Sayed couldn't even manage that. He didn't just fail to clear the bar. He refused to approach it.
Michigan is one of the most closely watched Senate battlegrounds in the country, and El-Sayed just handed his opponents a weapon they didn't have to manufacture. The audio is his own voice, in his own meeting, laying out his own strategy. There's no misquote to walk back, no "taken out of context" escape hatch that holds up. He said what he said.
Rogers, already positioned as the Republican frontrunner, now has a clean contrast to draw for Michigan voters: one candidate who recognizes Iran as a threat, and one who tiptoes around a dead tyrant's legacy to keep a political coalition intact.
Democratic primary voters will have to decide whether this is the kind of representation they want sent to Washington. But for the general electorate in Michigan, the tape answers a question most voters didn't even know to ask. When the Supreme Leader of Iran dies, whose feelings does your Senate candidate prioritize?
El-Sayed told his staff exactly whose. Voters should believe him.