Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed disavowed a 2012 opinion piece criticizing what he said were “failures” by President Barack Obama during his first term in office.
Just after Obama defeated Republican Mitt Romney and won his 2012 reelection campaign, El-Sayed wrote a column in the Huffington Post saying the outcome was “no victory. It was the rock we chose over the hard place.”
“This leader has perpetuated war, violated our civil liberties, deported more people from our shores than any other president before him, and the list of his failures goes on,” said El-Sayed, who was then a 28-year-old assistant professor at Columbia University.
On Sunday, in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” El-Sayed said he didn’t realize then how hard it was to bring about change.
“I was younger,” El-Sayed said. “And I was angry about circumstances.”
“That’s 2012 now, so it’s 2026, 14 years on. You grow up and you start to appreciate just how hard change is and how important it is to pick up and push,” El-Sayed said, adding that he thought Obama “did an amazing job with the circumstances he was in.”
Obama is scheduled to join El-Sayed on the campaign trail Oct. 24.
El-Sayed is locked in a tight race against Republican Mike Rogers for the Michigan Senate seat. His race is considered one of a handful that could be pivotal in Democrats’ efforts to take control of the Senate in November.
El-Sayed’s 2012 op-ed was critical of Obama’s use of drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen and the state of the U.S. economy at the time. El-Sayed, who is Muslim, said at the time that he felt no more dignified, no more accepted” under an Obama presidency due to nationwide policing tactics that El-Sayed viewed as unjustified and intrusive.
On “Meet the Press,” El-Sayed likened his criticism of Obama to the way one might criticize a family member or loved one, recalling his father.
“When you intensely appreciate somebody who’s done so much to make something you’re doing possible, you’re going to see the best of them and you’re also going to want to change. I can’t say how much I appreciate President Obama,” he said.
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