Ahead of campaign launch, El-Sayed removed YouTube videos critiquing July 4th fireworks, football, GOP border focus
His campaign said the statements “don’t reflect his beliefs today,” according to a CNN senior politics reporter.
Abdul El-Sayed, who won Michigan’s Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate earlier this month, had removed at least 100 YouTube videos — including one in which he called for an end to 4th of July fireworks and another floating the elimination of the Second Amendment — from his channel ahead of launching his campaign, according to reports.
CNN’s KFile first reported the findings, including the removal of a video titled “Can we PLEASE find another way to celebrate July 4th? Four reasons why fireworks suck.”
The video, originally posted July 10, 2024, features El-Sayed talking about “alternative ways of celebrating” the nation’s independence and includes segments titled “Fireworks just aren’t worth it: hear us out,” and “Fireworks can trigger PTSD in veterans,” according to the New York Post. An archived version of the video includes a description explaining that El-Sayed outlines safety risks posed by fireworks, Detroit’s air quality after fireworks, and what they are made of.
Andrew Kaczynski, a senior politics reporter who penned one of the CNN reports on the video removals, posted to X Aug. 11 summarizing the contents of some of the scrubbed videos, saying, “Transcripts show him floating replacing the 2nd Amendment, urging an end to July 4th fireworks, blasting GOP focus on the border.”
“His campaign says they ‘don’t reflect his beliefs today,’” Kaczynski noted.
Another video showed El-Sayed questioning whether football was “ethical” or “safe,” and in a separate audio he said that football is “very much associated with a particularly masculine and oftentimes toxically masculine culture,” the New York Post reported. The audio clip cited by the outlet had been posted by Bobby LaValley on X Aug. 10, garnering 1.8 million views.
A campaign representative told CNN that the spotlighted comments are not reflective of El-Sayed’s current beliefs.
“Abdul is the former captain of his high school football team, loves Michigan football on Saturdays, and celebrates the Fourth of July with fireworks like the next Michigander,” the representative told CNN. “Cherry-picked comments from old podcasts don’t reflect his beliefs today.”
El-Sayed had posted to X in a similarly positive tone regarding fireworks on July 4, 2025.
“Happy Fourth of July, Michigan! Enjoy the fireworks as we commit ourselves to building a country where all of us can thrive,” he said.
https://x.com/AbdulElSayed/status/1941177404006998158
According to the New York Post, in a third clip El-Sayed “suggested replacing the Constitution’s Second Amendment right to bear arms with a right to health care.”
CatholicVote Vice President of Advocacy Joshua Mercer warned that El-Sayed holds radical socialist policies and urged Catholic voters in Michigan to elect Republican Mike Rogers to the Senate when he faces off with El-Sayed in November, Zeale News previously reported.
“Bishop Robert Barron has warned Catholics about this new wave of Democratic Socialist candidates who are essentially communist,” Mercer stated.
According to the New York Post, in a separate recording El-Sayed had also accused “Republicans of using border security as an issue that they ‘love to flog’ while arguing that it ‘doesn’t even make the top five among issues that people in the United States actually care about that affect their lives.’”
The outlet noted that not all of the content removed from El-Sayed’s YouTube and other public profiles was controversial content.
In a statement to Zeale News regarding the removed controversial content, Mercer noted how recently El-Sayed, who is now 41 years old, had made the comments.
“Michigan voters are going to be surprised that El-Sayed hates fireworks, thinks football is too toxic, and that he doesn't like the tourist destination Mackinac Island,” Mercer stated. “It's no surprise that his campaign is scrambling to convince voters to ignore El-Sayed's bizarre dislike for all things Americana. No wonder El-Sayed campaigns with streamers who say America deserved 9/11. But these comments from El-Sayed were not the ill-fated statements of a college student decades ago. He said these crazy things when he was 39 years old!”
