Fox News ran a headline Friday saying the liberal media ignored questions about Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed's family and the Muslim Brotherhood. The record is more mixed than that. NBC put the question to him twice in three days, and the October 11 Meet the Press transcript shows exactly what he answered.
What Fox's headline claims, and what its own story shows
The Fox News Digital piece by Joseph Wulfsohn, published October 16, carries the subhead "ABC, CBS, CNN and MS NOW have not reported on the Michigan Senate candidate's alleged family ties to the Islamist group." It says a review of Grabien transcripts found no mention on ABC or CBS morning or evening broadcasts as of Thursday, October 15. CBS's morning show touched it Friday, only to note that El-Sayed denies his opponent's claims.
The body of the same story is narrower. It says CNN and MS NOW have not aired "dedicated news reports," then describes CNN's Abby Phillip and anchor Erica Hill addressing the allegations on air and MS NOW's Jacob Soboroff criticizing Republican Mike Rogers for pushing them. It also says NBC "questioned El-Sayed directly in two interviews." That is a real gap in coverage at ABC and CBS if Fox's review holds. We could not pull the Grabien transcripts, so that part is Fox's finding, not ours.
Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker at a March 2024 event. Photo: Joshua Qualls, Massachusetts Governor's Press Office, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
The NBC question, word for word
On October 11, Kristen Welker told El-Sayed that Rogers had made roughly ten references tying him and his family to the Brotherhood and asked him to "set the record straight." She asked it plainly, then again for himself and for his family. NBC posts the full transcript.
Official record
NBC News, Meet the Press transcript, October 11, 2026, interview with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. Read the full transcript on NBC News.
WELKER: "Can you set the record straight about whether you or your family have any ties to the Muslim Brotherhood?"
EL-SAYED: "No. But let's talk about this."
WELKER: "No, you don't have any ties?"
EL-SAYED: "No."
WELKER: "And your family doesn't?"
EL-SAYED: "No." — NBC News transcript
Conservative critics say Welker was too soft. NewsBusters' Tim Graham wrote October 14 that she "failed to do the Russert thing" and read aloud the sister's posts. The Washington Free Beacon's report on those posts is dated October 12, the day after the interview. We cannot say when NBC's producers first saw them.
The follow-up on Nightly News
Wednesday, October 14, NBC anchor Tom Llamas read the posts to El-Sayed on NBC Nightly News. Per Breitbart's transcription, El-Sayed answered, "I have no ties. We have no ties," then "I have never had these conversations with my mother. I wasn't raised by my mother," and called the posts "hearsay evidence from a tweet."
Llamas pressed on truthfulness, and El-Sayed asked, "Are you insinuating that somehow I was lying?" Fox reported Llamas replied, "I don't know, that's why I'm asking." Even the Daily Wire headlined it as El-Sayed being "cornered by liberal outlet." A network can be accused of burying a story and of cornering a candidate on it only so many times in one week.
30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York, home of NBC News. Photo: D. Benjamin Miller, Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
What the sister's posts say, and what they do not
El-Sayed's half-sister, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi, shares his mother, Fatten Elkomy. The Free Beacon quotes her writing in June 2012, "Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college," and "My family has long been MB." On July 3, 2013 she wrote, "I have had family jailed for being a part of it." Another post reads, "Praying for all my family that supports the #MB in Egypt. Lie low, stay safe." We could not load the posts on X directly, so these quotes rest on the Free Beacon, Fox and NBC's on-air reading of them.
They describe a mother's college activism five decades ago and unnamed relatives. Legal Insurrection, a conservative blog, notes there is "no evidence in the reporting that El-Sayed belonged to the Brotherhood himself," but that his denial went beyond himself because Welker asked about his family. His campaign told Fox the accusations were "debunked as racist and untrue."
CNN's Phillip, as quoted by Fox, said El-Sayed "doesn't have that kind of relationship with" his mother and that "he said to his knowledge, he is not aware of any connections." The NBC transcript has a flat "No," with no "to his knowledge." She may have been citing another appearance, which we did not find. On the relationship, the Free Beacon cites a Mother's Day 2026 campaign video, on El-Sayed's own YouTube channel, in which he phones her and signs off "Love you, Mama."
What is still open before November 3
Nobody has named the relatives, shown that El-Sayed knew of the posts, or shown that he is a member of anything. Those are the open questions, and "hearsay" is not an answer to the one Welker asked about family. The transcript is public, and so is the video. Voters in Michigan can judge his answer against the posts, and judge the networks by what they actually aired rather than by a headline.
Top photo: Abdul El-Sayed at a meet-and-greet at Michigan Tech, October 2025. Photo: Conlan Houston, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
