Sen. Ted Cruz warned that Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan's Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, has a "disturbing history of connections to the Muslim Brotherhood" and could gain access to some of the nation's most sensitive classified intelligence if elected, saying Americans could die if he shared those secrets with the group.
Cruz, who has 7.1 million followers on X, made the charge in a Friday night post on his account, writing that El-Sayed's record raises direct questions about what the candidate would do with a Senate seat and the classified briefings that come with it. "Abdul El-Sayed has a disturbing history of connections to the Muslim Brotherhood," Cruz posted. "If elected to the Senate, he could gain access to some of America's most sensitive classified intelligence. Americans could die if he shared those secrets with the Muslim Brotherhood."
The Texas Republican followed that post with a second one laying out what he called the "objective facts" behind his claim. "The evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that Abdul El-Sayed is a strong and lifelong supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood," Cruz posted. The senator cited an op-ed El-Sayed wrote in 2011 that Cruz said urged support for the Muslim Brotherhood, and pointed to a tweet from El-Sayed's sister stating that their family "has long been Muslim."
Cruz's posts landed as the Michigan Senate race enters its final stretch and as El-Sayed, who would become the first Muslim U.S. senator in American history if elected, faces intensifying scrutiny over his faith and his family. CBS News reported that the candidate's faith and family have come under intense scrutiny in the race, and Al Jazeera reported that Muslim advocates have described a wave of hate attacks targeting El-Sayed and said the best response is to elect him.
The origins of the Muslim Brotherhood charge have themselves become part of the story. The Guardian reported that the Republican claim that El-Sayed "publicly supported" the Muslim Brotherhood began with Laura Loomer, and that the Michigan candidate was signaling support for Egypt's pro-democracy movement in 2012, not for the Islamist group. The Washington Examiner, meanwhile, published an op-ed by John B. Roberts II, a former Reagan White House official, international political strategist and executive producer of The McLaughlin Group, under the headline "Why Abdul el Sayed won't denounce the Muslim Brotherhood."
Roberts wrote that NBC News Meet the Press host Kristen Welker kept insisting on Sunday that El-Sayed had denounced the Muslim Brotherhood, and that he was flabbergasted by the claim. He argued that until now the progressive candidate's campaign playbook has been to routinely deny any ties to the radical Muslim Brotherhood before turning the tables by questioning the motives of anyone who asks. Roberts pointed to an earlier exchange in which El-Sayed was asked whether he disavowed the Muslim Brotherhood, responded "Absolutely," and then attacked the questioner. Roberts drew a distinction between the two words at the center of the dispute: disavowal, he wrote, entails distancing oneself from a group's activities, while denunciation entails condemnation of the group itself.
The Examiner op-ed ran under the paper's opinion banner and was published Friday evening, hours before Cruz's posts. Another outlet, in coverage of the same subject, ran the headline "Abdul El-Sayed's Muslim Brotherhood Issues Just Got Worse," describing controversy over alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and extremist groups.
The sequence shows how a charge that began with an online commentator moved through a senator's feed and into the opinion pages of a Washington paper within a single news cycle, each step adding a layer to a story that El-Sayed's campaign has spent weeks trying to put behind it. Cruz's first post drew the connection between the Senate seat and classified material. His second supplied the supporting citations. The Examiner's op-ed supplied the argument that El-Sayed's earlier disavowal did not go far enough.
The White House, for its part, used the same Friday evening window to promote a different message entirely. The Small Business Administration posted that President Trump recognizes America's small businesses as the backbone of the economy and delivered The Working Family Tax Cuts, which the agency described as direct tax relief that puts more money into the pockets and businesses of hard-working Americans. The SBA post made no reference to the Michigan race.
The dispute over El-Sayed's record turns in part on how his 2011 writing is characterized. Cruz's post described it as an op-ed urging support for the Muslim Brotherhood. The Guardian's reporting described the signal as support for Egypt's pro-democracy movement in 2012 rather than for the Islamist group. Roberts's op-ed focused less on the 2011 writing than on what he described as El-Sayed's refusal to condemn the organization by name.
El-Sayed's campaign has not addressed Cruz's specific allegation about classified intelligence in the material available. What is documented is the candidate's earlier response to questions about the Brotherhood: a one-word disavowal followed by criticism of the person asking. Roberts seized on that pattern, writing that contrary to Welker's claims, El-Sayed has not denounced the Islamic extremist Muslim Brotherhood because he can't.
The political stakes are plain in a state where the Senate contest has drawn national attention. El-Sayed's candidacy would mark a historic first, and the scrutiny of his faith and family has accompanied that attention. Cruz's posts put a national security frame around the race, arguing that the consequences of a Senate seat extend beyond Michigan's borders and into the intelligence briefings that would follow a swearing-in.
Roberts, in his op-ed, framed the question as one of definition rather than evidence, arguing that a disavowal is not a denunciation and that the distinction matters when the group in question is the Muslim Brotherhood. Cruz, in his posts, framed it as one of access, arguing that the seat itself is the risk. Both arguments now sit alongside the Guardian's account of where the original claim came from.
Our Take
Ted Cruz has done what few Republicans have been willing to do in this race: he has named the specific danger rather than gesturing at associations. A Senate seat is not a civic honor; it comes with a security clearance, closed briefings and access to the secrets that keep American servicemen and women alive. Cruz's warning that Americans could die if those secrets were shared is the kind of plain statement that Washington usually avoids, and it deserves a direct answer from El-Sayed rather than another round of questioning the motives of those who ask.
The Examiner's op-ed makes the sharper point. El-Sayed said "absolutely" when asked whether he disavowed the Muslim Brotherhood, then attacked the questioner. That is not a denunciation. Roberts is right that the two words are not interchangeable, and voters in Michigan should notice which one the candidate has been willing to use. Cruz's second post supplies the record behind the charge, and the burden now falls on El-Sayed to explain it in his own words.
The Guardian's effort to trace the claim to Laura Loomer and to recast the 2011 writing as support for Egypt's pro-democracy movement is an attempt to change the subject from what El-Sayed wrote and said to who first repeated it. Where a story starts is a matter for reporters. Whether a candidate for the United States Senate has denounced the Muslim Brotherhood is a matter for voters, and on that question El-Sayed has so far offered a word he now refuses to stand behind.
