Abdul El-Sayed, the left-wing Michigan Senate candidate, appeared at a campaign rally Tuesday night alongside a University of Michigan Board of Regents candidate who shared, and later scrubbed, social media posts mourning a Hezbollah commander, amplifying Iranian regime propaganda, and calling Israelis "demons," the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Amir Makled, an attorney running to unseat longtime regent Jordan Acker as the Democratic nominee, introduced El-Sayed at the event, which also featured influencer Hasan Piker. Makled did not respond to requests for comment from the Free Beacon. Neither did El-Sayed.
The silence is worth noting, because the archived posts paint a picture that any serious political candidate would want to explain, or at least distance himself from. Instead, the posts were quietly deleted. And the man who shared them stood on stage introducing a candidate for the United States Senate.
The Free Beacon identified a string of posts Makled shared on X under the handle AttorneyMakled, all of which have since been removed but remain visible through web archive captures. Last June, Makled reposted a message from a Hezbollah fan account mourning the death of Abu al-Khalil, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's security chief, who was killed in what the post called an "'Israeli' strike in Tehran." The repost included a broken-heart emoji.
Makled also reposted a separate tribute to the slain commander:
"Give our greetings to the Sayed. A martyr on the road to Jerusalem, the armor of the Sayed. May god have mercy on your soul ya Abu Ali."
"Sayed" is a reference to Nasrallah, the slain former leader of a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. The posts treated his security chief's death as a heroic martyrdom, not the elimination of a key figure in an armed group responsible for attacks on American servicemembers and Israeli civilians.
On the same day Israel began its operation against the Islamic Republic last June, Makled retweeted a post from @IRIran_Military, described as a regime fan account. The post read:
"Never be the one to invite someone to fight (do not be the aggressor in war), but if someone calls you to battle, answer the call (and show no laxity in sacred war against the enemy), for the one who invites to fight is a tyrant, and a tyrant is always defeated."
The timing of that retweet, amplifying a call to "show no laxity in sacred war" on the day of an Israeli military operation, speaks for itself.
Makled's deleted posts were not confined to Hezbollah fan pages. He also reposted content from Candace Owens, the podcaster whom the Free Beacon described as a conspiracy theorist. In one post Makled amplified, Owens wrote about Israelis:
"These are not our friends or allies. These are demons and they are our enemies. They lie, steal, cheat, murder and blackmail."
In another repost from last June, Owens claimed Israel had a "bloodlust like no other" and called the country "demonic." Makled shared that, too, and then deleted it. The pattern of scrubbing politically toxic social media content after it surfaces has become a recurring theme among candidates and officials on the left who hope voters won't notice what they once endorsed.
Last July, Makled retweeted a meme referring to Syrian president Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa as "Jewlani" and claiming he was controlled by Israel. That post, too, was deleted.
El-Sayed's decision to campaign with Makled fits a pattern. The Senate candidate has his own history of since-deleted social media posts and controversial public statements. The Free Beacon reported in December that El-Sayed drew an equivalence between the September 11 attacks and the American response in deleted X posts and a 2021 op-ed. In his 2020 memoir, El-Sayed boasted that he refused to face the American flag during the national anthem as a college athlete.
Then there is the matter of Hasan Piker, the influencer who appeared alongside El-Sayed at the same Tuesday night event. Piker has publicly stated that "America deserved 9/11" and that it "doesn't matter if rape happened on October 7." El-Sayed chose to share a stage with him.
And after the death of former Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, El-Sayed held a private campaign call one day later in which he said he wanted to avoid making a public statement because many voters in Dearborn, Mich., were "sad." The reluctance to criticize a dead theocratic dictator, out of deference to constituent grief, tells you everything about the political incentives at work in certain corners of Michigan Democratic politics.
The broader trend of political figures facing scrutiny over inflammatory social media posts is not new. But what distinguishes this case is the layered nature of the problem: it is not one rogue post, but a sustained pattern of amplifying terrorist sympathizers and regime propagandists, followed by a methodical effort to erase the evidence.
Makled is seeking to unseat Jordan Acker, a longtime regent and supporter of Israel, at the state Democratic Party's convention on April 19. The University of Michigan's board of regents consists of eight members elected to eight-year terms by voters statewide. The winner of the Democratic nomination for Acker's seat will face the Michigan Republican Party's nominee on Election Day.
Acker's home was the target of anti-Semitic vandalism in 2024, a year that also saw Michigan students face criminal charges after participating in an anti-Israel encampment on campus that spring. The Free Beacon noted that Makled served as an attorney for some of those charged student protesters. The regent race, in other words, is not a sleepy down-ballot affair. It sits at the intersection of campus radicalism, anti-Semitism, and the broader fight over institutional control at one of the country's flagship public universities.
The question of who deletes politically damaging content and why has come up repeatedly in recent political cycles. In Makled's case, the deletion of a half-dozen archived posts praising Hezbollah figures, amplifying Iranian regime accounts, and sharing content calling Israelis "demons" raises an obvious question: Did he delete them because he changed his mind, or because he decided to run for office?
Neither Makled nor El-Sayed answered that question. Neither responded to the Free Beacon's requests for comment at all.
Michigan Democrats face a choice. They can nominate a regents candidate whose archived social media trail includes mourning Hezbollah commanders, amplifying Iranian military propaganda, and sharing posts that call an American ally "demonic." Or they can ask hard questions before April 19.
El-Sayed, for his part, has made his own choice clear. He stood on stage with Makled, and with Piker, a man who said America deserved 9/11. He declined to condemn Khamenei's legacy because his constituents were "sad." He deleted his own posts drawing equivalences between the September 11 attacks and America's response. And now he is asking Michigan voters to send him to the Senate.
The growing pattern of officials and candidates caught in social media cleanup operations reflects a deeper problem: a political class that says one thing in public and endorses something far more radical in the posts it hopes you'll never see.
Voters in Michigan deserve to know what Makled believed when he hit "repost", and what El-Sayed knew when he stood beside him. The political shakeups of recent months have shown that the public has little patience left for candidates who treat accountability as optional.
Delete the posts if you want. The archive remembers. And so should voters.
