Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) backpedaled after incorrectly attributing a quote about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to Abdul El-Sayed, who this week secured the Democratic nomination for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat.
On Wednesday, Cotton shared an X post written by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who said he was “excited” by El-Sayed’s victory over Haley Stevens, a moderate Democrat who had been endorsed by many establishment lawmakers in her party.
“Senate Democrats are ‘excited’ for Abdul El-Sayed who proudly said America deserved 9/11,” Cotton wrote on X in response to Murphy’s comment. “The Islamic-Marxists truly are taking over the Democratic party. We must never give them power.”
Cotton appeared to have mistaken El-Sayed, who is Muslim, for leftist influencer Hasan Piker, who proclaimed “America deserved 9/11” during a 2019 Twitch broadcast.
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Piker, who is also Muslim and campaigned with El-Sayed, later deemed his remark “inappropriate” and said he had meant to suggest that the U.S.’s “foreign policy decisions and our arming of insurgent groups in the region and our efforts in destabilizing the Middle East have a direct consequence.”
“Every part of what I advocate for is against violence,” Piker said in a 2019 appearance on the podcast “The Young Turks.” “I abhor violence. I think it’s awful.”
Cotton isn’t the only Republican to mistake El-Sayed for Piker. Mike Rogers, who will face El-Sayed in the race to represent Michigan in the Senate this fall, also linked the quote to his Democratic opponent on social media.
“I spent my life hunting terrorists,” Rogers wrote on X Wednesday. “I never in a million years thought I’d hear the words, ‘America deserved 9/11,’ but here we are. Michigan — we’ve got a state to save.”
Among those to call Cotton out for his mistake was Semafor journalist David Weigel, who wrote on X, “I don’t think [Republicans] are in a Politifact-watching mood here. More of a ‘make the SOB deny it’ mood.”
It wasn’t long before Cotton updated his X post to clarify that El-Sayed “proudly campaigns with extremists who say America deserved 9/11.”
It should be noted that El-Sayed’s friendly relationship with Piker has angered a number of prominent Democrats in addition to Republicans.
In a Fox News appearance this week, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) suggested El-Sayed’s campaign was bound to fail if he didn’t cut ties with Piker, noting: “You’re in a general election now … if I was a Republican, I would just dump $20 million for ads.”
And in an episode of CNN’s “The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper” that aired last Sunday, Democratic strategist James Carville deemed Piker a “blowhard” while taking aim at members of the “progressive left,” but did not mention El-Sayed by name.
“These people are too hardheaded to know that they’re not popular,” Carville said. “People don’t like them. They never run against Republicans, they just run against other Democrats, and their only message is: ‘We’re going to blow everything up.’”