Abdul El-Sayed’s ‘Are you circumcised? blunder could cost Dems — and create greater party fracture

Democratic candidate for US Senate Abdul El-Sayed speaks to supporters at an election-night rally at the Majestic Theatre on August 4, 2026 in Detroit, Michigan. Getty Images

There are sentences one expects to hear in a United States Senate campaign. 

And then there are sentences that, until Monday night, had probably never been uttered during one. 

During a live interview on his show, Fox News host Jesse Watters asked Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, “So you think it’s OK for a parent to slash his kid’s ding-a-ling off?” 

El-Sayed responded with a question of his own: “Are you circumcised?” 

Welcome to the 2026 midterms.

It’s only going to go downhill from here. 

The exchange was typical of the dodge-and-weave strategy El-Sayed used throughout the Democratic primary race, as he smugly evaded tough and rational questions about his policy positions on hot-button issues. 

El-Sayed wasn’t just unprepared to answer questions on transgender medical interventions for children; he was equally unable to intelligently discuss Sharia law, reparations, healthcare costs and windmills on Lake Michigan. 

His smarmy performance has been a gift to Republicans who see in the candidate a dark turn toward a new generation of extremists running as Democrats: elites promoting socialism while remaining deeply disconnected from the concerns of everyday Americans. 

Fractured voter base 

But it’s the issue of transgender “treatment” of children that presents Democrats with a real risk of coalitional fracture — and El-Sayed’s response to Watters indicated how unprepared they are for that eventuality. 

Consider the voters El-Sayed is courting in Michigan: progressives in college towns like Ann Arbor and religious Muslim voters in places like Dearborn. 

Democrats are counting on the latter to come through for them in November — but outside of a shared hostility toward Israel, the two groups have remarkably little in common. 

El-Sayed’s quip comparing gender-reassignment surgery to circumcision served as a detonation device between the two groups. 

Circumcision is, after all, one of the few religious practices Jews and Muslims emphatically share. 

For Jews, brit milah is a 4,000-year-old covenant stretching back to Abraham, traditionally performed on a baby boy’s eighth day of life.

For Muslims, circumcision is likewise an ancient and overwhelmingly observed religious tradition, rooted in the sunnah and practiced throughout the Muslim world. 

This is not some obscure bit of comparative religion: It is a defining ritual in the two faith communities whose increasingly combustible relationship may help decide the Michigan Senate race. 

And somehow El-Sayed — who has made his Muslim identity an important part of his public biography — chose this practice as his analogy for something many religious Muslims find morally abhorrent. 

That tells voters something. 

El-Sayed was handed a choice between defending the social values of the religious community he so conspicuously courts and defending the most doctrinaire position of the progressive movement. 

He chose the progressives without hesitation — and managed, in doing so, to insult Jews as a bonus. 

A progressive first 

His comparison is patently absurd. 

Circumcision removes the foreskin; it does not attempt to transform a boy into a girl, remove healthy reproductive organs or permanently medicalize a child in pursuit of a different sexual identity. 

The health benefits of circumcision are well documented — unlike gender reassignment, which comes with a litany of known and yet-to-be-discovered side effects, including osteoporosis and infertility just for hormonal “treatments” alone. 

El-Sayed knows this.

He is a doctor. 

Yet saying so would have required him to acknowledge a limit to the progressive orthodoxy on pediatric gender medicine. 

So instead, when Watters confronted him with an uncomfortable question, El-Sayed reached for the ancient religious practice of millions of Jews and Muslims as his rhetorical shield. 

Michigan’s religious voters should pay attention — and Michigan Republicans should run the clip relentlessly as a television ad for the next few months to make sure they do. 

The exchange revealed something much more consequential than whether El-Sayed can survive an awkward Fox News interview. 

It showed which half of his political coalition wins when progressive ideology collides head-on with traditional religious belief. 

On Monday night, El-Sayed gave Michigan voters the answer. 

Bethany Mandel writes and podcasts at The Mom Wars.