Abdul El-Sayed and Barack Obama caused a stir this week when the former president mounted a campaign effort in support of Michigan’s Democratic nominee for Senate.
El-Sayed’s past criticisms of Obama’s presidency, in which he called him a “failure,” swiftly came to light as commentators questioned the authenticity of their political partnership — but El-Sayed defended the past statements in a sit-down interview Sunday with “Meet the Press,” comparing Obama to his own father.
“We’ve lived through two Trump terms now,” the senatorial hopeful said in response to his 2012 criticisms. “So look, I know that President Obama was handed a really difficult set of circumstances, and he did his best … And I think about my dad. I wouldn’t have my life but for my dad’s efforts. So grateful for him. At the same time, there’s a lot of things about my dad that I’d do differently, right?
“It’s because when you intensely appreciate somebody who’s done so much to make something that you’re doing possible, you’re both going to see the best of them, and you’re also going to see the things that you want to change. I can’t say how much I appreciate President Obama.”
Elsewhere in the interview he said that he wrote critical op-eds on the presidents as someone “younger” this his current 41 years.
“The person who wrote those op-eds when I was younger — I was younger, right? And I was angry about circumstances.”
Watch the full “Meet the Press” clip below:
The op-ed Welker brought to question was published on Nov. 7, 2012 with the Huffington Post. In it, El-Sayed, then credited as an assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University, wrote that “Obama was not the right choice — he just wasn’t the wrong one.”
“This leader has perpetuated war, violated our civil liberties, deported more people from our shores than any other president before him, and the list of his failures goes on,” he said.
“I’ve read everything he’s written twice, and it’s because he was the president of my 20s,” El-Sayed told Welker. “I mean, it was the first time I ever saw myself in politics. I remember when he gave that 2004 DNC speech, and I had never seen politics look like that. He showed me something in myself I would never have seen without him.
“His run, the elegance, the grace, the commitment under pressure — just the basket of terrible things he was handed by the Bush era, whether it was a failing economy, wars, healthcare system that was deeply broken. And the way that he handled it all. Now, there is so much appreciation for what he showed me and what he showed our country, the fact that he went first, and also there are so many things that I point to and say, ‘I wish we could have that again.’ But my job is to step up and pick up the baton and run as hard as I can.”
It was announced earlier this week that former President Obama will campaign with El-Sayed in Detroit on Oct. 24 in a rally that, according to reporting from PBS, will also feature Michigan’s Democratic nominee for governor, Jocelyn Benson, and other top candidates in the state.
