CBS News and Bari Weiss Accused of Manufacturing Anti-Muslim Scandal Against Abdul El-Sayed

How CBS News and Bari Weiss Manufactured an Anti-Muslim Scandal Out of Abdul El-Sayed’s 9/11 Tweets

As Michigan approaches the upcoming 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the state’s political landscape has been upended by a manufactured controversy surrounding Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed. In August 2026, El-Sayed became the first Muslim nominated by the Democratic Party to run for the U.S. Senate in Michigan. Yet, this milestone has coincided with a sharp surge in anti-Muslim vitriol both nationally and locally, turbocharged by a recent editorial decision at CBS News under the guidance of Bari Weiss.

On Monday, CBS reporter Zak Hudak published a digital report titled with the critique that El-Sayed’s “deleted tweets on Sept. 11 attacks invite scrutiny of past remarks.” Behind the scenes, media-industry newsletter Status reported that Weiss was deeply involved in the story’s promotion, championing it across the network and personally directing the headline to explicitly incorporate the 9/11 angle. But in targeting El-Sayed’s archival social media posts, the network omitted critical context regarding what those posts actually said.

The Reality Behind the Deleted Social Media Posts

The core of the CBS News report focused on social media posts published by El-Sayed. Two of the deleted posts asked Americans to take the death toll of the Covid-19 pandemic as seriously as the 9/11 attacks. Another post was a comment about the consequences of the decadelong war on terror and a call to action: “We could save lives rather than take them.”

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Comparing the pandemic to the 2001 attacks was not unusual at the time. Then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo directly compared the pandemic, which ravaged New York City, to the attacks the same month that El-Sayed did.

El-Sayed’s campaign previously explained to Politico that all posts older than July 2023 were scrubbed from his accounts “to prevent any old posts from being taken out of context.”

Broader Political Backlash and Bipartisan Islamophobia

The manufactured scandal at CBS arrived amid a broader wave of hostility directed at Muslim public figures. Following El-Sayed’s primary victory, political opponents like President Donald Trump and Republican U.S. Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina attacked the candidate, with Mace writing on X that “Every single Muslim holding public office in America is a Trojan horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic.”

Photo: usnews.com

Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), noted the deep-seated opposition accompanying Muslim political progress. “American Muslims have made incredible political and societal progress in recent years,” Mitchell stated, pointing to increased representation in entertainment, sports, and the election of Democrat Zohran Mamdani as New York City’s first Muslim mayor. “But there also is a very concerted backlash to this progress. You’ve seen this in the resurgence of anti-Muslim hate and rhetoric, the targeting of mosques.”

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This backlash has materialized in fierce local opposition to mosque construction projects in places like McKinney, Texas. During a tense McKinney City Council hearing on August 4, where the council ultimately approved a site plan for the McKinney Islamic Association’s proposed new mosque, classroom building and gym, former mayor George Fuller condemned the toxic rhetoric. “I have never witnessed so much hate, anger and lack of humanity in our beautiful community gathered in one place as I did today at City Hall,” Fuller wrote on Facebook, after facing hostile jeers from opponents of the project.

Navigating the Fall Campaign Amid Scrutiny

What are your thoughts on how media institutions handle archival political statements? Let’s discuss below.