Emmer calls El-Sayed an "evil man" who "pals around" with people who believe America deserved 9/11
Tom EmmerUnited States representative for Minnesota’s 6th congressional district and House majority whip.
At the Republican midterm convention, Emmer called El-Sayed an “evil man” and linked him to people he said believed Americans deserved the September 11 attacks.
“This evil man pals around with people who believe Americans deserved to be attacked on 9/11.”
Reporting
Archived source
Where this statement fits
Mike Rogers’s 9/11 accusation against Abdul El-Sayed
After Michigan’s August 2026 Senate primary, Mike Rogers asserted that Abdul El-Sayed believed America deserved the September 11 attacks. His campaign defended that accusation by citing El-Sayed’s association with Hasan Piker and reluctance to disavow him. El-Sayed had explicitly rejected justifying 9/11 and argued that appearing with a person did not imply agreement. He described Rogers’s attacks as an effort to divide voters through Islamophobia. Pod Save America hosts Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer later debated the strategy and construction of a related Republican ad without endorsing its factual claims.
Source and context
Reporting
About this source
AP reports and quotes Emmer’s GOP convention remarks. The source attributes the statement to Emmer; it does not establish the underlying accusation about El-Sayed.
Archived source
About this source
Audio replay preserving the convention-speech segment used to corroborate the attribution and wording reported by AP. It is a rebroadcast archive, not an official convention recording.
Before the quotation
Mike Rogers had accused El-Sayed of believing America deserved the September 11 attacks based on El-Sayed’s association with Hasan Piker. El-Sayed had rejected justifying the attacks.
After the quotation
The reports attribute the remarks to Emmer. They do not establish that El-Sayed agrees with Piker's past comment or holds the belief that Americans deserved the attacks.
How this statement is classified
The label describes this statement's response within the context above.
Why this label?
The case records the competing argument as whether declining to disavow an ally warrants an adverse inference about a candidate's judgment or beliefs. Emmer repeats the accusation from the convention stage, again routing it through association rather than any statement by El-Sayed, and adds a personal denunciation. Endorsing and amplifying the charge is support for the proposition under scrutiny. The closest competing label is condemns, previously carried here; it loses because his denunciation of El-Sayed is the accusation being made, not a criticism of it. Relabelled from condemns in a September 17 audit: condemns was being carried both by the speakers making this accusation and by those attacking it, so the label was doing opposite work on one conduct under scrutiny. Speakers who assert or support the accusation are now classified “Defended or excused”, matching Alyssa Brouillet (433) and John Fetterman (974); speakers who criticise it, including El-Sayed (434, 509, 512), Cole Wozniak (459) and Jon Favreau (437), keep condemns.
- Recorded on
- Published here
- People and groups discussed
- Abdul El-Sayed, Hasan Piker
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Abdul El-Sayed calls Piker’s 9/11 remark “a dumb comment” and rejects its use in the campaign
“It’s a dumb comment. He himself has called it a dumb comment. And they keep bringing it up because all they can talk about is the comment of a guy who has zero power aside from his stream, rather than talk about the guy who has a lot of power to make dumb wars that we’re paying for.”Read statement
El-Sayed disavows Piker's al-Qaeda comparison and says he gives it little weight
“I do not agree with this statement, nor do I give much weight to the statements made by a social media streamer. I am more concerned with the dangerous policies of Donald Trump and Mike Rogers that are raising the prices of gas, groceries and healthcare for Michiganders.”Read statement
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- Emmer calls El-Sayed an "evil man" who "pals around" with people who believe America deserved 9/11
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The Dispute Index. "Emmer calls El-Sayed an "evil man" who "pals around" with people who believe America deserved 9/11". First published: 2026-09-15. Last updated: 2026-09-25. https://disputeindex.com/events/571-at-the-republican-midterm-convention-emmer-called-el