Abdul El-Sayed (Bill Pugliano/Getty Images) Left-wing Michigan Democratic Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed said at a campaign event last year that terrorists commit “heinous act[s]” because they feel “pain and frustration,” citing “hypocritical” U.S. actions that are “creating pain,” video footage exclusively obtained by the Free Beacon shows. El-Sayed—who is tied with state lawmaker Mallory McMorrow for the lead in the hotly contested Democratic primary for Michigan’s open seat, according to a new Emerson College poll—made the remarks at a campaign stop in South Haven, Mich., in July 2025 in response to a question about how he would “deal with hostages and terrorism as a U.S. senator.” El-Sayed stressed the need to “be curious about why those things happen in the first place. Like, what drives somebody to want to commit such a heinous act?” “There is a level of pain and frustration and a level of lack of agency that they have to feel to do something so insane and absurd, right? And so I’ve often tried to ask, like, so what moves somebody into that, and how is it that we’re behaving that may get somebody to think that we don’t see them, and that’s creating pain?” El-Sayed went on to argue that “we set up this rules-based international order, and then we break the rules of the rules-based international order, and that creates a situation where there are a lot of people who look at us and say that’s hypocritical and that’s wrong.” The Free Beacon’s Alana Goodman writes: “The candidate’s remarks are a throwback to the so-called ‘root causes’ debate that unfolded in the years after the 9/11 attacks, when many academics and pundits argued that poverty and desperation across the globe were a major cause of anti-American terrorism. Others pointed out that terrorists were typically educated and well-off and that the argument overlooked the centrality of deep-seated ideological motivations. El-Sayed’s 2025 remarks suggest he would bring the ‘root causes’ view to the Senate, demanding empathy and understanding for violence against civilians as opposed to a military response.” READ MORE: EXCLUSIVE: Michigan Senate Hopeful Abdul El-Sayed Blamed US for ‘Creating’ Terrorism: ‘What Happens When People Are in Pain?’