Abdul El-Sayed distances himself from Green New Deal in Senate race

Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed told Fox News host Jesse Watters on Monday that he would not defend the Green New Deal when confronted with his past support for the progressive climate proposal, a notable shift from years of publicly embracing it by name.

“Look, I’m not going to defend the Green New Deal,” El-Sayed told Watters after the host confronted him over his past support for the proposal. When Watters reiterated that El-Sayed was on record supporting it, El-Sayed redirected the discussion toward lowering energy costs and creating Michigan jobs by prioritizing renewables.

Michigan, which Trump won in 2024 but lost in 2020, is shaping up to have one of the most competitive Senate races in the country, with the likely narrow results in the state potentially determining control of Congress. Critics charge that El-Sayed is downplaying some of his past beliefs and scrubbing his online footprint to appear more moderate, and therefore more palatable, to Michigan voters.

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Though El-Sayed declined to defend the Green New Deal in front of a national audience, he previously hasn’t been so shy.

A Fox News Digital review of El-Sayed’s deleted social media posts, preserved via the Internet Archive, uncovered dozens of examples of the Michigan Senate hopeful defending the Green New Deal by name.

“Rather than announcing the next iteration of this or that car at [the North American International Auto Show 2019], I’d love to see automakers announce that they support the #GreenNewDeal,” El-Sayed wrote in January of that year.

On the primary campaign trail, Rep. Haley Stevens criticized El-Sayed over his past support for the Green New Deal on the grounds that it could lead to job losses in the automobile manufacturing industry.

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“The struggle for the Green New Deal uplifts the struggle for racial justice,” El-Sayed wrote in April 2019.

The Green New Deal is a 2019 progressive policy framework floated by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey that seeks to gradually transition the United States’ electrical grid away from fossil fuels. Their plan has become synonymous with the left-wing faction of the Democratic Party, leading many Democrats running in competitive races to distance themselves from it.

In another post, this time from September 2019, El-Sayed wrote “I believe in a Green New Deal” five times in all caps. He also suggested that the Green New Deal is essential to preserve freedom of speech because there can be no First Amendment “without the freedom to breathe the breath you have to take to speak in the first place.”

“The #GreenNewDeal doesn’t center polar bears or glaciers, it centers those children forced to breath (sic.) in corporate pollution in their communities,” El-Sayed wrote. “I stand with the Green New Deal because it stands for those kids.”

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CNN previously reported that El-Sayed scrubbed large swathes of his commentary from the internet prior to announcing his run for Senate. The deletions appear to have been selective, as he still has some posts up from before he launched his campaign.

In his since-deleted social media posts, El-Sayed endorsed the “defund the police” movement, argued cities spent too much policing poverty and described police departments as “standing armies we deploy against our own people.” In a separate YouTube video that was later hidden, he floated replacing the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms with a constitutional right to health care and called Border Patrol agents “white supremacists” while blaming American policies for migration from struggling nations.

Though El-Sayed regularly mentioned the Green New Deal on X prior to running for Senate, he has not posted the phrase even once since announcing his candidacy, a review found. 

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The El-Sayed campaign did not respond to a request for comment when reached by Fox News Digital on Tuesday.