Democrats just flipped Michigan's Senate seat in Tuesday's blue wave.
Hours before that win, cameras caught the winner shoving a foreign reporter around.
What Abdul El-Sayed said next has a British broadcaster calling him pathetic.
El-Sayed Grabbed A Sky News Reporter Twice And Told Him His Vote Counts For Zero
Sky News correspondent James Matthews approached Abdul El-Sayed on Tuesday to ask him about Michigan's Senate race.
El-Sayed didn't answer him.
He demanded to know if Matthews was "registered to vote in the state of Michigan."
Matthews said he wasn't, because he's a British journalist based in America.
El-Sayed's response wasn't an answer. It was a shove dressed up as a question.
"Why would I care to have a conversation with you?" he snapped.
After Matthews said he was a journalist, El-Sayed scoffed, "in the U.K."
"You know how many votes I want to get in the U.K.? Zero," El-Sayed told him, placing both hands on the reporter's shoulders. "I'm never running for office in the U.K."
Matthews pushed back, saying the election "matters to the world." El-Sayed grabbed him again, demanding to know "what country" he represented.
Then he tried to humiliate the network entirely, claiming "like five people" watch Sky News in America.
Sky News broadcasts to more than 138 countries. El-Sayed just didn't care.
He walked off telling Matthews to stop "chasing" him, as if asking a senator a question is stalking.
El-Sayed Clashed With The Same Reporter Twice Before Piers Morgan Called Him Out
El-Sayed had already clashed with the same reporter one day earlier.
That exchange came after Matthews pressed him about Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens crossing party lines to endorse Republican Mike Rogers.
"If you keep being in my way, I'm not going to be very happy," El-Sayed warned him then.
Translation: ask me something I don't like, and you'll regret it.
Sky News stood behind its correspondent.
"We're proud of our correspondent James Matthews, who was doing his job," a network spokesman told Fox News Digital.
Even Piers Morgan, a man who rarely misses a chance to defend a journalist, couldn't let it slide.
"Pathetic, and very patronising," Morgan wrote, telling El-Sayed he "should show more respect" to the United Kingdom.
Other British commentators piled on too, with one calling it "bully boy" behavior from Michigan's newest senator-elect.
The El-Sayed campaign never responded to Fox News Digital's request for comment. Of course they didn't.
America's First Muslim Senator Has A History Of Dodging Questions On Sharia Law
This isn't the first time El-Sayed has treated a direct question like a personal attack.
He ran for Senate while defending his own adherence to Sharia law, telling the New York Times years ago it was his lifelong "obligation" and that he never wanted to say "I did it the easy way" when he met his maker.
When an Oklahoma measure tried to keep Sharia law out of government, El-Sayed didn't just disagree with it. He compared the ban to the Trail of Tears.
JD Vance called him out on the trail for "defending Sharia law in the state of Michigan." El-Sayed spent months dodging the follow-up instead of answering it.
He's faced the same scrutiny over alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and his answer is always the same: deflect, then move on.
Grabbing a foreign reporter and mocking his country isn't a one-off bad night. It's the same playbook he's run for years, just caught on camera this time.
The Reporter Assault Double Standard Democrats Never Have To Answer For
Remember Greg Gianforte.
In 2017, the Montana Republican body-slammed a Guardian reporter the night before a special election. He was charged with assault within hours, pleaded guilty, paid a fine, and spent years answering for it in headlines across the country.
Michigan Democrats just elected a man who put his hands on a reporter twice in 48 hours, and the same outlets buried it under historic-win headlines by morning.
A Republican touches a journalist and it's a referendum on the soul of the party. A Democrat does it on camera, twice, and it's a footnote to his victory speech.
That's not journalism. That's a courtesy Democrats extend to their own and nobody else.
El-Sayed is heading to the Senate for six years with that same contempt for anyone who asks him a question he doesn't want to answer. The next reporter who corners him won't have an election-night crowd to hide behind, and neither will he.
Sources:
- Joseph A. Wulfsohn, "Abdul El-Sayed puts hands on Sky News reporter in hostile confrontation hours before election victory," Fox News, November 5, 2026.
- Staff, "Watch: El-Sayed Puts His Hands on Reporter in Heated Exchange," RedState, November 4, 2026.
- Staff, "Revealed: El-Sayed Proclaimed 'Obligation' To Follow Sharia Law Until the Day He Dies," Washington Free Beacon, 2026.
- Leona Salinas, "Abdul El-Sayed Dedicated His Life To Sharia Law," Daily Wire, 2026.
- Staff, "Michigan Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed Compared an Oklahoma Ban on Sharia Law to the Trail of Tears," Washington Free Beacon, 2026.
- Staff, "Unearthed clip exposes clash between El-Sayed and ex-GOP rival: 'Muslims definitely hate you,'" Fox News, 2026.
