America’s voters handed a stinging rebuke to the Trump administration Tuesday night that was so big they can’t even try to deny it — and one of the most satisfying wins of all was that of Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed, who gave one of the best (and meanest!) speeches of the night.
He was so confident in his win that he made a victory speech before the race was even officially called (and as his Republican opponent Mike Rogers was sending his own supporters home, both of `em) thus also demonstrating dominance in the dick-measuring contest he had been yanked into.
And what a speech it was! The 2026 midterms were definitely the best Hater’s Election I have seen in my lifetime, and I am so happy to see AES is a fellow Hater!
“My name is Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed,” he says right off the bat, getting all those fun Arabic slides and gutturals in the mix in a way that makes linguistics nerds like me very happy but which definitely made a bunch of right-wing heads immediately explode.
And the audience went wild!
“Up until right about now, you may have noticed we always say inshallah, or God willing, whenever the outcome of this race was mentioned,” the good doctor continued. “But today, or tonight, we can turn that inshallah into an —”
“Alhamdullilah!” shouted the happy crowd along with him, and a few states over, Laura Loomer immediately burst into flames and burned to death of spontaneous combustion, so sad! Oh, sorry, I guess I dreamed that last part. Damn.
“For the right-wing ops, that just means praise be to God,” he added, when the cheering died down a little, showing right off the bat that this man knows how to troll in all the right ways.
“This is all yours,” he went on, thanking voters for the trust they showed him in the race and pledging to never forget where he came from. “Michigan, I can’t wait to serve you with the same bigheartedness, open-mindedness, grit and earnestness that you’ve shown me ... you gave me grace and strength in my lowest moments.”
The cheers got even louder later in his twenty-minute speech when he really started in on the righteous shit-talking.
“There’s an astroturfed, corporate-funded advertising campaign, built to deceive and distract,” El-Sayed added, extremely correctly. Oh, what a nice change it is to have a bright person in power who actually understands how disinformation campaigns work instead of a bunch of brainless, ghoulish old blancmanges buying right into the lies!
“At first they pointed to my name and my faith as if to say, you know — he’s a little different … and when it didn’t work, they tried to guilt me by association. And when that didn’t work, they went all in on one of the ugliest campaigns we’ve seen in our lifetimes,” he said.
It really was ugly as hell, wasn’t it? The New York Times has an overview of some of what we all just witnessed playing out together:
Mr. El-Sayed, a Michigan-born Rhodes scholar and former public health official in Detroit and Wayne County, was not just an anti-establishment economic populist winning on what proved to be a beyond-their-wildest-dreams night for Democrats. He was all of that and the son of Egyptian immigrants.
And he didn’t merely beat former Representative Mike Rogers. He won after prevailing in a contentious primary election against Representative Haley Stevens — and then shrugging off her 11th-hour endorsement of Mr. Rogers. He won, too, after a general election that was among the ugliest, most racist, most Islamophobic campaigns in the history of American politics, with President Trump again and again calling him “a jihadist” and Mr. Rogers and his supporters all but painting him as a terrorist.
No “all but” about it. They showed the World Trade Center coming down and said he did it. They said he was just itching to put YOUR WIFE AND DAUGHTERS in a hijab. And they said it every minute your poor mom was watching TV.
Our new US Senator Abdul El-Sayed endured a lot of racist, xenophobic bullshit with a lot of grace and charm, up to and including some real weird and unhinged shit over the last few days from another Democrat whose name we will not mention here! And he remains a class act, even though he is clearly very righteously angry about it. And so am I, for that matter. These racist ghouls degraded us all with their absolute gutter shit in MY name, as an American, and I had no say in it, and I hope they suffer for it and never, ever attain any sort of power again. I wouldn’t trust those fuckers to run a corner store!
And then this is where his speech started to get really good:
“They were targeting and attacking the very idea of America. See, they hate the idea of an America big enough for anyone who looks a little different, or prays a little different, or whose family comes from a different part of the world. That includes me but it also includes anyone and everyone who doesn’t look like them, pray like them, love like them, or isn’t rich like them. […] They want an America that is too small for some of us.”
“We built a movement,” he added, mentioning the ugliness of the final weeks of the race. “The bad guys lost.”
And then he took it personal, to the delight of the ravening crowd and to me at home, watching it all unfold live! This was one of the best, juiciest parts!
“Mike,” said incoming US Senator Abdul El-Sayed during his speech, “enjoy your retirement!”
He added:
“I know you got a house in Florida and two yachts! See, you chose hate and Michigan chose hope. May we never have to see the likes of you in this state again.
“JD, habibi, there is this delicious irony in the fact you’re constitutionally obligated to swear me in, in January … so you know what that means? Wolverine one, Buckeye zero!
“Donald, look, I know you struggle with my name so after JD swears me in in January you can just go ahead and call me Senator.
“To the super PACs and special interests who tried to beat us, we are coming for your system of politics.
“To AIPAC, who spent $42 million against us, thank you for giving me the opportunity to beat you twice.”
And the convulsions among the right-wing anti-Muslim racists are something to behold! Fox News called the speech “gloating,” lol.
It’s called a victory speech for a reason, racists! Chupame!
The 2026 midterms were clearly the Hater’s Election (complimentary), and the Haters (complimentary) won big. Now Haters have to keep up the energy and continue pushing for a truly multiethnic, multicultural democracy, because that’s the only way we are going to be able to adequately address the way climate change is upending our existence, and anyway life is just more fun when we’re all hating on racists and misogynists and dipshit Nazi ghouls together!
In fact, Senator-Elect El-Sayed made that exact point later on in his speech, when he — oh, just watch the whole damn thing yourself. It’s great!
I’ll say now what I yelled at my screen on Tuesday night when I saw this speech:
TALK YOUR SHIT, ABDUL!!!!
He earned this clap back and STILL was a better man than I would have been. If I endured his level of bigotry and opposition, I would reach supernova levels of petty in victory.
And that's "Doctor El-Sayed", FY NYT.