Key facts
- The Guardian reported El-Sayed won a Michigan Senate seat in the November 3 midterm election.
- Donald Trump called El-Sayed a "jihadist lunatic" during the campaign, the Guardian reported.
- El-Sayed wrote in a May 2010 Guardian article that UK democracy had "the upper hand on the US."
- A clip of El-Sayed dismissing a Sky News reporter's question was viewed more than 13 million times on X, the Guardian reported.
Abdul El-Sayed won election as a US senator for Michigan in the November 3 midterm election, the Guardian reported, in a campaign the paper said was marked by racism and Islamophobia. Donald Trump mocked his name, called him a "jihadist lunatic" and said the Senate would need "a special metal detector for Abdul" if he were elected, according to the Guardian.
In the final hours before the vote, El-Sayed had a heated exchange with James Matthews of Sky News, the Guardian reported. A clip of the encounter was viewed more than 13 million times on X, the paper said. The Guardian also reported that Haley Stevens, the Democratic congresswoman El-Sayed narrowly defeated for the nomination, endorsed his Republican rival at the last minute.
The Guardian reported that El-Sayed, a former Rhodes scholar and doctoral student at Oxford University, wrote an article for the paper in May 2010 saying "UK democracy has the upper hand on the US" after attending a Labour Party selection event in Bethnal Green and Bow, east London. In a January 2011 piece, the Guardian said, he challenged Barack Obama over his response to the Arab spring. The paper said El-Sayed returned to the US in 2011 after completing his doctorate in public health.