https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/oct/18/cbs-reporter-apologizes-abdul-el-sayed-postCBS’s chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford has apologized for and deleted a social media post praising a man who questioned the Democratic Michigan US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed about the Muslim Brotherhood during a town hall on Saturday.On Sunday, Crawford, who initially joined CBS in 2009, wrote on twitter: “Earlier, I tweeted a video from an Abdul El-Sayed town hall. I deleted that tweet because it was a violation of CBS News standards. I apologize.”Crawford’s deleted post had thanked a man named Tommy, who has been later outed as a Republican operative worked for Republican senator Josh Hawley, while also saying: “I had to watch this twice to catch Dr Abdul El-Sayed’s nanosecond, ‘yeah, absolutely,’ response. His subsequent uninterrupted three-minute diatribe proving your exact point is the kind of spectacular self own most [people] only dream about triggering. Congrats.”The video to which Crawford referred showed the man who identified himself only as Tommy asking El-Sayed: “Will you disavow the Muslim Brotherhood?”In response, El-Sayed said: “Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Why are you asking the question?”Tommy replied: “Well, because they’re a terrorist group.” El-Sayed then rejoined, “But what are you implying? Do you assume that I wouldn’t?“You’re asking the question because implicitly you assume that I’ll have dual loyalties, right? You assume that somehow I wouldn’t disavow, or that I’ll have some higher order allegiance than the constitution.”Crawford’s tweet evidently generated substantial backlash from within CBS and among other members of the news media.The Guardian’s media reporter Jeremy Barr wrote on twitter on Sunday: “I’m told there was a lot of internal backlash at CBS News to the Jan Crawford tweet – which may be why she deleted it.”
Meanwhile, journalist AJ Katz wrote: “Jan Crawford is CBS News’ chief legal correspondent, not an opinion commentator. Pretty striking language from a broadcast network news journalist about a Democratic senate candidate on her public account.”Pod Save America co-host Tommy Vietor said in part: “Very strange editorializing from a chief legal correspondent!”Meanwhile, CNN political commentator Karen Finney wrote that Crawford had been “caught red handed” trying to help “spread false, racist lies about Abdul because he is Muslim”.“Shame on you,” Finney also wrote.Crawford’s apology and post deletion comes as CBS has faced intense scrutiny over allegations of political bias after conservative commentator Bari Weiss was appointed as the network’s editor-in-chief in October 2025.Weiss’s appointment came after CBS’s corporate parent, Paramount Skydance, acquired Weiss’s right-leaning digital media company, The Free Press.Furthermore, on Tuesday after recently joining CBS News as its global affairs correspondent, the veteran British broadcaster Sir Trevor Phillips delivered a blunt message during a tense meeting with the network’s London bureau staff, telling critics questioning the outlet’s integrity to “fuck off and let us do our jobs”.The MS Now host Ali Velshi interviewed El-Sayed on Saturday and asked him about getting Muslim Brotherhood-related questions while running against Mike Rogers, a Republican, for a Senate seat in the 3 November midterms.“The whole reason this question is being asked is to insinuate that somehow I have dual loyalties,” said El-Sayed, whose party is predicted to gain seats during the midterms. He also said: “It’s a crazy thing to assume that somehow I’d have dual loyalties, as somebody who is avidly running to protect” rights related to abortion, the LGBTQ+ community and religion.
>Man who heckled Abdul El-Sayed is former aide of far right wing republican senator Josh Hawley, records showhttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/19/abdul-el-sayed-heckler-tommyA man who heckled the Democratic candidate for Senate Abdul El-Sayed and demanded he disavow the Muslim Brotherhood at a Michigan town hall is a former aide to the Republican senator Josh Hawley, according to congressional staff records.At the event on Saturday, an attender who gave his name only as “Tommy” shouted from the crowd, asking whether El-Sayed would disavow the movement. El-Sayed answered: “Sure, yeah, absolutely,” then turned the question around, asking whether the man assumed he wouldn’t.Tommy said he had simply not heard El-Sayed reject the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements. Under Trump the US has moved to designate certain chapters of the group as foreign terrorist organizations.Over nearly five minutes at the town hall, El-Sayed pointed to how the question shouted by Tommy carried an implication of “dual loyalty”, comparing it with the doubts once raised about John F Kennedy’s Catholicism, and told the room he was running for the Senate and “happen[s] to be Muslim”.He then asked Tommy whether he would disavow any attempt to read religious doctrine into American law. Tommy said he would not. El-Sayed answered that it was Tommy who needed to understand the constitution, drawing cheers, and the man left the room.The questioner has since been identified as Thomas Teepell, whose staff records show he joined Hawley’s office as an intern in 2023 and rose to operations director before leaving in February. He then became political director for Philip Sarnecki’s Kansas gubernatorial campaign. Sarnecki lost the Republican primary on 4 August.
Teepell is the son of the Republican strategist Timmy Teepell, a longtime adviser to Hawley and the former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal. The Handbasket first reported the identification.The question echoes a line of attack that Republicans have tried to push against El-Sayed for weeks, including when Rogers raised alleged Brotherhood ties during one of their debates.After El-Sayed told NBC’s Meet the Press that neither he nor his family had any such ties, the conservative Washington Free Beacon resurfaced social media posts by his half-sister, the University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi, describing their mother’s activism in the group in the 1970s. There is no evidence El-Sayed was personally involved; he was born in the 1980s and was not raised by his birth mother. He has called the suggestion that anyone in his family took part “an insane thing to assume”.On Meet the Press, he said Rogers had raised the issue because he “really wanted to repeat the word Muslim”. In a separate NBC interview, he dismissed the questions as “not serious”.Trump has gone further, similarly without evidence, saying at a White House lunch that El-Sayed was “100%” Muslim Brotherhood and calling him a “fraud”, and describing him on another occasion as a “member” of the group. Ahead of the weekend, Trump dog-whistled on his Islamophobia, saying El-Sayed’s name is “Adulbabababababa Mohammed El-Sayed.” He added: “So I was right. He’s a jihadist.”The attacks come in a close race. El-Sayed holds a narrow lead in the RealClearPolitics average, 48.1% to 45.5% for Rogers. The most recent survey, from InsiderAdvantage taken on 9-10 October, had him ahead 48% to 46%. Most leads sit within or near the margin of error.El-Sayed will campaign with Barack Obama in Detroit on Saturday 24 October, the first day of in-person early voting, at a rally that will also feature the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Jocelyn Benson. Election day is 3 November.
The whole Q&A appears to be part of a Republican influencer campaign to try to embarrass Abdul El-Sayed. Earlier this month, The Michigan Daily reported that the conservative PAC America Next offered College Republicans $200 to boo El-Sayed at a town hall in Flint and ask provocative questions.https://www.michigandaily.com/news/government/conservative-pac-paying-college-republicans-to-disrupt-abdul-el-sayeds-rallies-group-chat-messages-seem-to-show/The Teepells are involved in a similar campaign, with Thomas’s father’s organization, Breakthrough LLC, receiving $250,000 from Jindal’s dark money organization for influencer marketing against Abdul El-Sayed. The attempt has clearly backfired, as El-Sayed turned the exchange into a positive clip for his senatorial campaign.https://bsky.app/profile/abdulelsayed.bsky.social/post/3my4gocauzs2x
Weird, there's a blatant example of corrupt media spreading paid propaganda, but ESL shill is completely silent
>>1544003Not only that, but she was caught conspiring with the Republican agent to smear a democratic candidate.
>>1543997That wasn't an apology. And what she deleted was a blatant lie. She's either stupid or a liar or both.
>>1543997The reality is that people will never accept a Muslim being American or pro-America no matter how much they will tell you their focus is on the American people.You can disavow the Muslim Brotherhood, stand against genocide and be pro human rights, but people are then going to try and get you on the idea that Muslims will always inherently lie in order to get into power.It's a completely pointless battle to fight against unfortunately
>>1544010Not only is he a muslim, he's a Democrat and a commie too, There's almost nothing less American or pro-America
>>1544010They said the same thing about the Catholics, yet here we are. You're just saying conservatives need a group for everyone to hate to cover up how they're raping the country.
>>1544010Yet in pure hypocrisy, Trump appointed Dr Oz, who is a Muslim. Confront a redhat about that and watch the mental gymnastics.Also. Christians, Jews, and Muslims all pray to the exact same God.
>>1544012you're less american
15440101544012https://novaramedia.com/2026/07/09/jewish-people-in-the-usa-prefer-mamdani-to-netanyahu/Reality just keeps on proving opinions wrong.
>>1543997>I deleted that tweet because it was a violation of CBS News standards.Yeah because she just straight up fucking lied that he didn't disavow the muslim brotherhood and somehow tried to make it seem like this was a self own even though it was a perfectly reasonable and rational response calling out someone who was blatantly (and was later objectively fucking proven even) to be a republican operative.Like ffs it didn't take long for it to turn out that "concerned citizen Tommy" was Tommy Teepell, literally the son of a Republican political advisor. The whole thing was a pre-planned failed attempt to get a political slander clip. I guarantee you that Crawford's response was already given to her before Tommy even entered that room to ask that question.
A jeet is set to be the next GOP governor of Ohio, but Muzzies are absolutely out?This is how low the nation has sunk.
>>1544020That's because he's a far right conservaive and republicans have no principles, they only follow their NPC programming on who they're ordered to vote for.
>>1544012your post is unamerican.you should be against the wall.
>>1544020Jeets are capable of being Americans. Wealthy jeets especially are fine.Muzzies? Not even once, if they have their 9 year old daughter in a trash bag to go to school.Mamdani Muzzies are fine. Abdul makes his wife veil. Dogshit non American muzzie.>>1544026We outnumber you, violent mental dog. No French shit by you little brown retards over here.
>>1544015Jews and Muslims fought together against the Crusaders. They have been fighting each other because of the greatetst psy-op in history.Bottom line: Jews worship the God of Abraham and learn from the prophets. They do not believe that Jesus was God incarnate, but that he was a prophet and teacher like the others.Muslims believe the same thing: There is one god of Abraham, and various prophets whose followings they adhere to, including Muhammad and Jesus.Only Christians believe that Jesus is more than a prophet and teacher, but is God incarnate.
>>1544031>Jeets are capable of being Americans. Wealthy jeets especially are fine.there it is. Jeets are cheap labor the same as the rest, but work at a somewhat higher level.
>>1544015Most Christians don't know that Muslims pray to the God of Abraham A lot of only converted after Trump entered politics and are only there to worship power
EL CID(Euro invader)!! vs EL-SAYED!!who will be the Great White Hope to defeat this Moorish invader?https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BE7QDaBoo_4&pp=ygUTRWwgQ2lkIDE5NjEgVHJhaWxlcg%3D%3D
>>1544031>We>reddit spacing
>>1543997Wow. Two threads on the topic? Definitely doesn't look like damage control.
>>1544114Republicans were caught paying operatives to crash democratic town halls and the conservatively biased media was also cuaght conspiring with them.It's a very big story
>>1544122>this extremely common thing in American politics is a big story!Lmao you're not American. Its not a big story, you're doing damage control kek.
>>1544129Every accusation is a confession for conservatives. Going to try and slide these new threads, again?
>>1544131I hope you're getting paid for this.
>>1544131Every accusation is a confession, periodIf you gay bashing, you're a homo.If you're calling people ESL shills, you're probably not a native english speaker, and you're probably not making a regular income.Every accusation is a confession from both sides, from all sides
>>1544135>mum both sidesMLK was correct about the threat of the white moderate.
>>1544136And Malcolm X was wrong about whitey.He was too much of a radical.
>>1544132i'm pretty sure he has a real job unlike you
>>1544154post proof you collect a paycheck
>>1544158i don't post the same shill talking points 24/7 and get upset when called out for it
