Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is facing backlash for going on a lengthy rant about War Secretary Pete Hegseth and his family, which appeared to be largely rooted in anti-white racism.

While appearing on the Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know podcast, El-Sayed described Hegseth as a familiar high school type who “would have rode the pine.” This was framed in terms of high school athletics. “He probably got to start two games his entire career playing whatever sport it was and it made his life and his parents came and cheered so hard for him. And as a kid whose parents never came right and started every game, part of me is just like, bro, I feel bad for you,” the Democrat nominee said.

“Somebody told you you’re a lot better than you really are. Like there’s something about being a brown kid whose parents like, you know, no matter what you do, you’re never enough.”

El-Sayed then elaborated on the parental support he attributed to Hegseth. “So you’re just like, oh, but for him, the very fact that he made the team, his mom was making cake. She was wearing his jersey. She had a cap made for him… You know the type. So I’m like, bro, you grew up thinking that you were somehow special, but you are not,” he continued.

“And you have been living off that fume for the rest of your life. Could you imagine what we would have become if we had supportive parents who just uplifted us for being mediocre?”

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El-Sayed went on this bizarre rant against Pete Hegseth — claiming that Hegseth "rode the pine" in "whatever sport he played" in high school.

He invoked Hegseth's mother (moms are fair game now, huh?), and claimed she was "the type" who would have worn her son's jersey to… pic.twitter.com/YEucHwxyWb

— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) October 30, 2026

Despite El-Sayed’s bizarre comments, Hegseth was an all-conference and all-state basketball player at Forest Lake Area High School in Minnesota, where he set school records for three-point shooting and helped the team reach the state tournament. He also lettered in football and later played at Princeton University.

The comments form part of a longer record of statements by El-Sayed that have been interpreted as reflecting racial resentment. In a since-deleted 2021 post, he referred to border agents as “white supremacists” in the context of a disputed photograph of agents intercepting migrants. “How about asking how our policies decimate Caribbean & Central American (and so many other) countries—and why we allow white supremacists to police our borders?” he wrote at the time.

In other deleted posts from the same period, El-Sayed stated that “the fact that cops kill Black folks so regularly tells us who society considers part of the ‘public’ & from whom they are to be kept safe. Its not just a few bad cops — it’s an entire SYSTEM of white supremacy.” He has also described American politics as having “revert[ed] to a strain of White supremacy and racism.”

In a 2021 Substack essay, El-Sayed linked “toxic masculinity” to “the heart of America’s most popular sport” and described men’s sports culture as involving racism, misogyny, and homophobia as “lingua franca.”

More recently, he pejoratively told black community leaders on the campaign trail that “white people” try to paint him as a socialist, which he claims to not be.

Abdul El-Sayed: "White people like to call me a socialist.”

Follow: @AFpost pic.twitter.com/YPtqlGUbAO

— AF Post (@AFpost) September 3, 2026

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