Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) did not hesitate when asked to name the most extreme socialist candidate running in the 2026 midterms. His answer: Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, the Democrat running for Senate in Michigan.
"Well, that's like who's the tallest midget? Because man, oh, man. That's a tough one. I'd have to say just on sheer jihadist credentials, it would have to be Abdul El-Sayed," Moreno said during a Breitbart News Fight Club Roundtable hosted by Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow and Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle, according to Breitbart's Katherine Hamilton.
Moreno, who flipped Ohio's Senate seat in 2024, did not stop at the label.
"He goes on Fox News, and he deflects every question: 'Did I want America to suffer during 9/11? Well, people can't afford groceries.' That isn't the question that you were just asked. This guy is the most dangerous one," Moreno said.
The senator, who built a career in the automotive business before entering politics, compared El-Sayed to the kind of operator he learned to spot in the car lots of the 1980s and 1990s: "the slick ones."
Moreno's comments were part of a wide-ranging roundtable. In other remarks, he said Sherrod Brown's comeback Senate bid is the work of a career politician who "doesn't know how to do anything else," and argued that voters angry about gas prices should understand that electing Democrats would make higher prices permanent.
Concerns Raised at Senate Hearing
Moreno is not the only official raising alarms about El-Sayed. A Senate counterterrorism expert testified at an August Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on Muslim Brotherhood threats that El-Sayed's candidacy "raises homeland security concerns because of family ties to Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups and connections to a Midwest voter-engagement organization the expert said is tied to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)," according to Fox News.
El-Sayed, a former Michigan health department director, has built a national profile among progressive activists. His Senate campaign has drawn attention from both parties as Democrats try to expand their map in states Trump carried. Republicans argue his background and associations make him unelectable statewide—if voters learn about them.
That is the fight Moreno is picking. His argument is that the national media has allowed El-Sayed to present himself as a mainstream progressive focused on kitchen-table issues, while his radical record and connections go unexamined.
What Moreno Says Republicans Must Do
The Ohio senator also used the roundtable to push his party to go on offense about its accomplishments—modernizing government, cutting the federal workforce by nearly 400,000, fighting fraud, and lowering prescription drug prices—while acknowledging voter frustration over prices.
"We've got to go on offense and talk about all the great things we've done, and acknowledge gas prices need to be lower," Moreno said. "There's no question about that, but that's a temporary situation that will resolve itself the second that conflict is down."
Gas prices remained at record highs for early fall. The national average for regular was $4.41 a gallon on October 1, down nearly seven cents from a week earlier but still the highest on record for this time of year, according to AAA. September's average of $4.33 was 50 cents above the previous September record set in 2023 during the Biden administration.
Not everyone shares Moreno's optimism about November. HuffPost reported Wednesday that Senate Republicans are projecting confidence despite polling and projections that show Democrats favored to retake the House and competitive in at least five red states, including Ohio and Michigan. Cook's Political Report projects Democrats pick up between one and five Senate seats, and Nate Silver's model gives Democrats a 71 percent chance of flipping the Senate.
Moreno's answer to that talk is simply to fight harder. "Look, we have almost 400,000 less federal workers," he said. "Even if you think the government's working the same as it was before, that is a massive permanent tax cut to the American people, and we can accelerate that pace of innovation."
Our Take
Patriots, this is what it looks like when a Republican actually names the problem instead of dancing around it. For months, the legacy media has treated Abdul El-Sayed like a fresh-faced progressive reformer—the kind of candidate Democrats can sell in a red-leaning state. Bernie Moreno just told the truth: this man's record, his family's ties to Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups, and his organization's connection to CAIR are not footnotes. They are the story.
The Senate counterterrorism expert who testified in August didn't mince words about the homeland security concerns. Yet El-Sayed keeps getting friendly airtime with soft questions about groceries. That is the "wolf in sheep's clothing" Moreno described. If Michigan voters don't hear the full record before November, they'll walk into the voting booth blind—and every American will live with the consequences of a Senate seat handed to a radical who has no business holding a security clearance, let alone a vote on our national defense.
This is a test for Republican messaging. Moreno is right: you don't win by playing defense. You win by exposing the radicals, drawing the contrast, and reminding working families that the same party that gave us $4.41 gas also wants to hand a Senate seat to a man with these associations. The GOP should be running this ad in every Michigan market starting tomorrow. The question is: will they?
