Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has spent the final days of his race explaining why a commercial that blames Jews for the price of eggs is not his problem. The ad is not his. The message is. And he has refused to disavow it.
What the Ad Actually Says
The spot shows a couple in a grocery store. The woman tells the man to put the eggs back. “We have to set that seven dollars aside for killing Palestinians,” she says. He asks whether the United States already gives Israel four billion dollars a year. She answers that the country is now giving another twenty-six billion. That works out to one hundred sixty-one dollars per person, she explains, because “it’s costing us a lot of money to drop bombs on Gaza.” He asks whether Israel gets universal health care. She says yes, and that Americans are probably paying for that too. They put the bananas back.
YESTERDAY: Hasan Piker defends Cenk Uygur’s ad, attacks Haley Stevens.
On the ad Stevens asked El-Sayed to condemn: “Your grocery prices have gone up because of Israel, which is objectively fucking true. You can’t just say it’s anti-Semitic.” https://t.co/rnKWNFhSXD
— Max 📟 (@MaxNordau) November 1, 2026
The ad closes by showing pictures of Israeli leaders and declaring that Republican Mike Rogers “is for they/them.” Abdul El-Sayed, it says, is for you.
The commercial was produced by Rebellion PAC, the group fronted by Cenk Uygur. The core of the ad first appeared during Uygur’s 2024 presidential campaign. The version now circulating in Michigan simply swaps in the names of the current Senate candidates. The group said it spent one thousand dollars to place the ad online. It has been viewed millions of times.
What El-Sayed Will and Will Not Say
El-Sayed’s campaign issued a statement within hours. The ad “is not affiliated in any way” with the campaign. “No one speaks for Abdul but himself and his campaign.” The statement added that El-Sayed has repeatedly condemned antisemitism. It did not say the ad was false. It did not say the ad was dangerous. It did not say the ad should be taken down. It did not disavow the claim that American families cannot afford groceries because the United States supports Israel.
Rabbis in Michigan and elsewhere have asked him to go further. They noted that the campaign’s response distances El-Sayed from the people who made the ad while leaving the content untouched. One rabbi said the candidate has “distanced himself from the commercial, but he has not disavowed it.” Another group of clergy at Temple Israel in suburban Detroit wrote that the message is “unmistakable” and that neither El-Sayed nor his campaign has clarified that the claim is false.
🔥🔥🔥 Democrat Rep. Haley Stevens — who narrowly lost the Michigan Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed in August and initially endorsed him — just endorsed his Republican opponent Mike Rogers!
This came after El-Sayed’s campaign told her she was “no longer welcome.” She had demanded he denounce the anti Mike Rogers / anti-Israel Rebellion PAC ad that blamed high grocery prices on U.S. aid to Israel (the spot showing a couple putting food back because “we have to fund killing Palestinians”). It’s despicable.
Stevens appeared with Rogers at a Detroit church today and said she doesn’t belong in El-Sayed’s campaign.
Two days before Election Day in a race that could decide the Senate.
— Reality Snark 🇺🇸 (@RealitySnark_) November 1, 2026
Why the Refusal Makes Sense for Him
El-Sayed has spent the campaign saying the same thing the ad says, only without the grocery store. He has called Israel “an affordability issue.” He has said the money spent on the West Bank should be spent on the west side of Detroit. He has told audiences that every time someone asks how the country will pay for health care or schools, the answer is to stop sending money abroad “to drop bombs on people’s schools or their hospitals.” He has said Americans are paying for the conflict “in gas, we’re paying for it in our groceries, we’re paying for it in our souls.”
Those statements track the ad line by line. Condemning the commercial would require him to condemn the argument he has already made in his own voice. It would also require him to risk the support of the voters who have treated that argument as a feature rather than a bug. Public averages put the Michigan race inside the margin of error. In a contest that close, the voters who hear “for killing Palestinians” as a reason to choose one candidate over the other are not a group any candidate on the left can afford to offend in the final week.
The ad is not El-Sayed’s. The refusal to disavow it is. That refusal is the clearest statement he has made about which voters he intends to keep.
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