Democrats winning congressional primaries in this midterm cycle include a wave of radical left candidates not just allying with socialists like Bernie Sanders but with communists like Hasan Piker. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed campaigned with Piker, a man who says America deserved 9/11 and insists mass-murdering communist dictator Mao Zedong was a "great leader."
Not every network is avoiding the positions and associations of El-Sayed. CNN has repeatedly pushed him around, "like a Republican" would be the joke. The sharpest one came on July 19 on State of the Union.
CNN host Jake Tapper quoted from audio obtained by the Washington Free Beacon that when Iran's "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Khamenei was killed in the war, El-Sayed told staff, "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."
Boy, does that make Dearborn sound like a terribly anti-American town.
But Tapper pressed on: "I thought that quote was interesting because the ayatollah has killed tens of thousands of innocent Iranians, not to mention the proxies that Iran has funded that have killed innocent civilians all over the Middle East. Why were you worried about offending people who support the ayatollah?"
The candidate could only dodge: "And now you're asking me about the ayatollah, who's dead, by the way, and you're not asking me about the service members who've died. You're not asking me about whether or not this war should have ever been fought."
A week before that, Inside Politics host Manu Raju noted that El-Sayed claimed he never called for defunding the police and then played audio from 2020, where El-Sayed insisted, "I believe that we do need to defund the police insofar as defunding the police is disinvesting in the means of incarcerating someone or killing them on the streets. What if we were to invest in social services? What if we were to invest in public schools? What if we were to invest in public libraries? ... And it also means investing less in police."
Once again, El-Sayed couldn't provide much of an answer: "Do you disagree with investing in libraries and public services and social services? ... You fixate on the word defund."
That complaint is real. Leftists are used to the elitist media not "fixating" on the actual positions Democrats took a few years ago. They're supposed to be spared from such scrutiny.
On July 3's The Arena, CNN host Kasie Hunt repeatedly pestered El-Sayed on whether Israel has a right to exist, and he couldn't somehow say "Yes." That would be very upsetting to all the ayatollah fan club members in Dearborn.
El-Sayed protested the question: "It's interesting because nobody's ever asked me whether or not I believe Palestine has a right to exist. ... Israel exists."
Hunt shot back: "You say it exists, but does it have a right to?"
Is that a "gotcha" question? El-Sayed kept arguing around the issue: "I just said the question of Israel's existence is not a question. I'm not going to play this gotcha game about whether or not it has a right to exist."
Hunt replied: "You're not going to play the gotcha game, but you're not going to say you think Israel has a right to exist." He claimed the question was "quite secondary" to whether America sends money to Israel.
One can applaud CNN for bringing scrutiny to this candidate, and he keeps showing up to deflect the questions. One could also guess that CNN would prefer a less radical, more electable Democrat. But it's praiseworthy all the same.
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org.
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