Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic frontrunner for Michigan's U.S. Senate seat, spent the spring of 2020 screaming at Americans to stay locked inside their homes while 40,000 people died of COVID — then did a complete 180 and cheered on massive, unmasked Black Lives Matter protests the second George Floyd was killed on May 26, 2020. Because apparently the virus checks your political affiliations before deciding whether to spread.
You remember the rules, right? You couldn't go to church. You couldn't bury your grandmother. You were a murderer if you went to the beach. But marching shoulder-to-shoulder with thousands of strangers? That was "essential."
El-Sayed, a former Detroit health official and Columbia medical school graduate, was one of the loudest voices demanding total compliance with lockdown orders. According to Just The News, he tweeted on March 25, 2020: "Don't be a #COVidiot: #StayHome." Real charming bedside manner from the good doctor.
By April 15, 2020, he was going after protesters who dared challenge Governor Whitmer's stay-at-home orders, posting: "Make no mistake: this was a protest IN FAVOR OF #coronavirus." Got that? If you protested lockdowns, you were literally rooting for a virus. These people were out of their minds.
Then George Floyd died, and the rules evaporated overnight. By June 3, 2020, El-Sayed was singing a brand new tune: "Racism is a #publichealthcrisis. And #COVID19 is a racism crisis." So COVID went from a deadly plague that required shutting down the entire economy to a racism problem that could only be solved by... gathering in massive crowds without masks. The science!
As Vice President JD Vance observed back in June 2020: "I'm still amazed at how quickly the moral scolding ceased." You and the rest of us, Mr. Vice President.
The data El-Sayed himself cited — that Black Americans were dying of COVID at 2.4 times the rate of white Americans — should have made him MORE concerned about unmasked protests in communities of color. Instead, he used it as justification for the very behavior he'd spent months calling reckless and deadly. The hypocrisy isn't subtle. It's neon.
And now this guy wants a promotion. El-Sayed is running in the August 4, 2026 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Michigan, up against Rep. Haley Stevens and State Sen. Mallory McMorrow. He's the progressive darling of the race — which tracks, because nothing says "progressive" like having two sets of rules depending on who's protesting.
The receipts are all there. Every tweet. Every scolding lecture. Every pivot. He told you that you were killing people by leaving your house, then celebrated when his team flooded the streets. We didn't forget. And Michigan voters shouldn't either.