“Ideally you put one ogre on a pike, and then everyone else gets the message, and all of a sudden starts to sound a lot different.”
Abdul El-Sayed, Jul 27, 2026
. Zoom call with donors (leaked audio published by Politico).
Said to donors while running in Michigan's 2026 Democratic Senate primary; quoted identically by Politico and the New York Post. El-Sayed said the "ogre" was Sen. John Fetterman and that he meant a 2028 primary challenge against him, not violence. He did not retract it. Rep. Hillary Scholten called it a "violent, vulgar" threat.
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