As the nation prepares to remember the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Democratic Party is finding itself in hot water over its surging left-wing candidates who have given controversial statements about the attacks. 

The Democrats’ Senate nominee in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, has generated the most recent controversy. 

He has spent months fielding questions about his relationship with left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who previously told his audience that the United States “deserved” the 9/11 attack. During the primary, El-Sayed repeatedly campaigned alongside Piker and, at first, declined to condemn his remarks. In August, El-Sayed dismissed Piker’s comment as “a dumb statement.” 

Most recently, El-Sayed apologized to Michigan’s Jewish Democrats for controversial comments he made earlier this year following a March attack against a synagogue in the Detroit area. In that attack on Temple Israel, in West Bloomfield Township, a gunman rammed the synagogue with his vehicle and opened fire. The suspect, who was originally from Lebanon, was motivated to carry out the attack after some of his relatives were killed in an Israeli airstrike during the country’s war against the terrorist group Hezbollah.

At the time, El-Sayed condemned the synagogue attack, saying there was “never a justification for attacking innocent people” but added that “violence is a cycle” and “hurt people hurt people.” 

After facing pushback for the comments, even from members of his own political party, El-Sayed apologized to Jewish Democrats in the state. 

“I made a mistake,” El-Sayed told the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus in Lansing this past weekend. “I should have issued a statement, of course, condemning it, and it just should have been the full stop.” 

The nominee argued he wanted to “offer broader context” but did not properly acknowledge the dignity that fear and that pain should have been afforded.” He also said: “If my statement caused pain, I’m sorry. That was not what I intended.” 

El-Sayed’s past statements about the attacks, however, have continued to surface. In one post from April 2020, he compared the number of victims on 9/11 to the death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic, CBS News reported on Monday. 

In another, El-Sayed suggested that because more Americans died from COVID-19 than 9/11, he hoped “that means we'll spend the next ten years fighting a war for public health & against poverty ... like we launched a global #WaronTerror after 9/11. We could save lives rather than take them.” 

His comments and association with Piker have prompted some state Democrats to refuse to endorse or campaign alongside El-Sayed after he narrowly defeated the more centrist Rep. Haley Stevens in the state party primary last month. 

Michigan Rep. Hillary Scholten is one of the more vocal holdouts among several Democrats who are wary of El-Sayed’s associates and views on Israel, The Washington Post reported this week. 

El-Sayed has tried to distance himself from Piker without breaking with him completely. 

“I want to be crystal clear, nobody speaks for this campaign besides me and my campaign spokespeople,” he has said several times after the latest controversy in which Piker said Jews who support Israel could face backlash or violence in the United States. 

The pattern predates the current cycle. Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota set off a firestorm back in 2019 when she told an audience at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) that the group was founded “because they recognized that some people did something” on 9/11 and American Muslims faced discrimination as a result. 

“Here's the truth. For far too long we have lived with the discomfort of being a second-class citizen and, frankly, I'm tired of it, and every single Muslim in this country should be tired of it,” Omar, who is Muslim, said. “CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., defended Omar, describing the backlash against her statement as a “pure racist act” and suggested she was being targeted for speaking “truth to power.” 

“They do this all the time to us, especially women of color. They do that. They take our words out of context because they are afraid because we speak truth, we speak truth to power," Tlaib said. "My sister, Ilhan Omar, what she was talking about was uplifting people by supporting their civil liberties and their civil rights.”

Democratic Socialists of America-aligned candidates outside Congress have generated similar controversy this year. 

Former Maine Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner, a Marine veteran who ran against Sen. Susan Collins, before he was forced to drop out, co-wrote a 2002 op-ed in the Bangor Daily News as a high-schooler arguing “one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter” and said “every terrorist is portrayed as evil.” 

The op-ed, which resurfaced during the campaign this year, also argued that media outlets ignored the terrorists' motivations “to appease the nation’s newfound sense of patriotism.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist elected last year, has faced a different kind of scrutiny. 

He has repeatedly condemned the 9/11 attacks, but victims’ families have urged the mayor not to attend the 25th anniversary commemorations, arguing that he has associated with people and ideas antithetical to the memory of the victims’ sacrifices. 

For example, Mamdani has faced criticism for his endorsement of Aber Kawas, the Democratic nominee for New York's 12th state Senate District. 

During Kawas's campaign, a clip resurfaced of him saying that requiring an apology for “a terror attack that a couple of people did” while ignoring “genocides and for slavery” was “reprehensible.” 

Kawas later told Fox News Digital she was speaking about “the wrongful scapegoating of Muslim Americans,” not defending the attacks.

“I will proudly honor the families, the survivors, the first responders forever impacted by that horrific terror attack by standing alongside them at this year's 9/11 commemoration, reaffirming that we will never forget the solemn day felt by all of us who call this city home and, frankly, by all of us who called this country home," Mamdani said in a statement in response to a petition signed by thousands, including several 9/11 victims’ families.