On August 4, something significant happened in the American political landscape. Abdul El-Sayed, a 41-year-old progressive candidate with a compelling personal story, won Michigan’s Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate. His victory sets up a high-stakes general election in November against Republican Mike Rogers, and the winner will take over the seat being vacated by retiring Senator Gary Peters. Michigan is not just any state; it is a true battleground, a so-called swing state where the outcome is often decided by a razor-thin margin. In this complex electoral map, one community holds outsized influence: the large Arab American and Muslim population. For them, El-Sayed’s candidacy is deeply personal. If he wins in November, he would become the first Muslim U.S. senator in American history. That alone would be a milestone, but it also explains why he has become such a magnet for misinformation. Soon after his primary victory, false claims began spreading across social media, some promoted by very prominent political figures. It is a familiar pattern, but one that feels newly urgent in a state where every vote and every doubt can tip an election.
The attacks on El-Sayed did not happen by accident. According to Lawrence Pintak, a journalism professor at Washington State University and author of a book on America and Islam, El-Sayed is an ideal target for political disinformation. “He checks off all the boxes: He’s a Muslim, he’s a progressive, and he is vocally critical of Israel,” Pintak said in a statement to DW. That combination makes him a lightning rod. He is not some abstract policy wonk; he is a physician, an epidemiologist, and a former Detroit city health director, someone who has spent his career in public service. Yet the online narrative tries to turn him into a caricature. The lies range from the absurd to the deeply harmful, and they are all designed to do the same thing: make voters question his legitimacy, his values, and even his basic humanity. In an age of deep political division, these attacks are not just noise. They are part of a coordinated effort to delegitimize candidates who threaten the status quo. And because El-Sayed’s identity and politics make him stand out, he becomes an easy target for a digital ecosystem that rewards outrage over accuracy. The goal, as Pintak suggests, is to bury the real person beneath a mountain of manufactured scandals.
One of the most viral falsehoods after El-Sayed’s primary victory involved the bizarre claim that he had received far more votes than existed in Detroit. A Facebook post declared, “Of course they cheated. Nobody actually votes for communists,” and linked to an article with a headline claiming that El-Sayed “got three times as many votes in Detroit as there are registered voters.” The story said he received 1.4 million votes in Detroit alone, in a city with only about 480,000 registered voters. It sounds scandalous, but it is completely false. The article was originally published as satire on a page called “America’s Last Line of Defense,” which openly states that “nothing on this page is real.” The page is run by Christopher Blair, a well-known creator of fabricated political content, who has been called the “godfather of fake news.” The problem is that when satirical posts are shared on other pages and stripped of context, they begin to look like real news. Even worse, the fabricated claim echoed something then-President Donald Trump had said about Michigan just days earlier. Trump claimed, without any evidence, that “miracles happen in Wayne County, including more votes being cast than there are voters, by a lot.” In reality, Michigan has about 7.3 million active registered voters, and El-Sayed received 743,455 votes across the entire state in the Democratic Senate primary, not 1.4 million in Detroit alone. Still, the damage was already done. Michael Hameleers, a professor who studies misinformation, warned that this kind of allegation is a form of delegitimization. When people are told again and again that elections are rigged, they stop trusting the system itself. And once that trust is broken, it is incredibly hard to restore.
Another persistent falsehood is the accusation that El-Sayed is a communist. Donald Trump repeatedly described him that way, including in a Truth Social post published shortly after El-Sayed’s primary victory. But the label has almost nothing to do with El-Sayed’s actual political philosophy. His campaign has focused on government-sponsored health insurance, taxing billionaires, and reducing the influence of corporate money in politics. Those are progressive positions, but they are not communist ones. In fact, El-Sayed has explicitly rejected the socialist label, calling himself a capitalist, albeit one who understands the flaws in the system. “I’m not a socialist. I’m just a capitalist who understands how capitalism works,” he has said. He even drew a pointed contrast between himself and self-described democratic socialist Bernie Sanders. When asked about Trump’s communist accusations, El-Sayed laughed them off, saying, “The man is so clearly a joker.” Pintak called the claims historically bizarre and sees them as part of a systematic Republican strategy to equate “progressive” and “democratic socialist” with “communist.” It is a loaded word designed to trigger fear and anger, especially among voters who associate communism with tyranny and economic collapse. The fact that El-Sayed is a doctor who has spent his life fighting for public health is lost in the noise. Instead, the label becomes a weapon. And as social media amplifies these accusations, the truth gets buried even deeper. What matters to the people spreading these lies is not accuracy, but the emotional response the word “communist” evokes.
Perhaps the most disturbing claim is the accusation that El-Sayed believes America deserved the September 11 attacks. After El-Sayed won the primary, his Republican opponent Mike Rogers posted on X that El-Sayed was “someone who believes America deserved 9/11.” This is false. The allegation has surfaced repeatedly, but it comes from a dangerous conflation of El-Sayed’s views with those of one of his supporters, a Twitch streamer named Hasan Piker. Piker, an American political commentator, has been a vocal supporter of El-Sayed’s Senate campaign, appearing at rallies and in livestreams. In 2019, during a livestream, Piker made a remark saying that America had “deserved” 9/11, a comment that drew widespread criticism and which he later walked back. But nothing in that remark reflects El-Sayed’s own beliefs. When fact-checkers at PolitiFact asked Rogers’ campaign for evidence to support the accusation, they pointed to a video clip of El-Sayed refusing to disavow Piker’s 2019 comments. That is guilt by association, not proof of anything. Pintak, who studies Islamophobia, described this exact tactic as a key part of the disinformation playbook. He notes that El-Sayed has become a target at a time when the Republican Party has shifted its focus from anti-immigrant rhetoric back to an anti-Muslim narrative. This is not new. During El-Sayed’s 2018 campaign for Michigan governor, he faced Islamophobic reporting. Similar attacks have been leveled against other Muslim candidates, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has been falsely portrayed as an extremist. Pintak’s own research during the 2018 midterms found that Muslim candidates, from local school boards to Congress, were systematically targeted by a social media narrative of manufactured outrage that was disproportionately Islamophobic, xenophobic, racist, and misogynistic. The purpose is always the same: to undermine the candidate’s legitimacy and reduce trust among voters.
What all of this reveals is something deeply uncomfortable about modern American politics. Disinformation is not simply a side effect of the election season; it is a strategy. It is used to distract from real issues, to demonize opponents, and to make voters feel that participating in democracy is futile. When a candidate like Abdul El-Sayed is attacked with false claims about voter fraud, communist conspiracies, and even sympathy for terrorists, the cumulative effect is intended to exhaust and frighten people. But looking at the man behind the headlines, the picture is very different. He is a doctor who has worked to improve public health, the son of Egyptian immigrants, and a candidate who talks about healthcare, housing, and economic fairness in ways that resonate with ordinary people. His faith is part of his identity, but it does not define his entire worldview. And his record is public, documented, and clear. The lies told about him are not just attacks on one person; they are attacks on the idea that a Muslim American can serve in the highest halls of power while remaining true to their beliefs. For voters, the lesson is simple: before sharing a shocking post, take a moment to check the source. Before believing a label, look at the policy. Before judging a person, listen to their own words. In a democracy, the truth is the only thing that protects everyone. And in a state like Michigan, where every vote matters, the effort to replace honesty with noise is a threat to the very idea of self-government. El-Sayed’s candidacy is a historic moment, but whether it is remembered for what it could have been or for what he actually stands for depends on whether enough people are willing to see through the fog of lies.