Sickening Deleted 9/11 Posts Haunt Abdul El-Sayed

Abdul El-Sayed deleted old social media posts comparing 9/11 deaths to COVID-19 deaths, but CBS News found and verified them anyway.

Quick Take

CBS News verified two deleted posts from Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed comparing 9/11 casualties to COVID-19 deaths.
A September 11, 2021 post compared “3K lives” lost on 9/11 to “~1M lives” lost in wars afterward, calling both losses caused “ignorantly.”
El-Sayed’s campaign says it deleted all posts older than July 2023 to stop old material from being taken out of context.
El-Sayed defended himself, saying 9/11 was “a disaster” and “a terrible attack on our country.”

What The Deleted Posts Actually Said

CBS News said it verified two social media posts from El-Sayed that had never been reported before he deleted them. In those posts, he asked Americans to feel the same outrage over COVID-19 deaths that they felt after the September 11 attacks. The comparison put a national tragedy next to a pandemic death toll, a pairing many readers found jarring no matter the intent behind it.

One post, dated September 11, 2021, went further. It read: “Today, I mourn the 3K lives, 6K injuries, & infrastructural devastation in NYC, perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my faith. Tomorrow, I’ll mourn ~1M lives, millions of injuries, & infrastructural devastation in 3 countries, perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my country”. That post was first uncovered by the Washington Free Beacon before CBS and Fox News picked it up.

The word “ignorantly” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. It applies the same label to the terrorist attack and to America’s military response. Critics say that framing treats the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil as morally equal to the wars fought afterward. Supporters say it’s a critique of war policy, not an attack on 9/11 victims. Readers can judge the words for themselves, but the pairing was clearly deliberate.

The Campaign’s Explanation And The Timing Problem

El-Sayed’s campaign told reporters that every post older than July 2023 was deleted “to prevent any old posts from being taken out of context”. That is a common practice in modern campaigns. Digital consultants routinely scrub years of old posts before a candidate faces statewide scrutiny. But CBS noted the campaign never said exactly when these specific posts were removed, leaving a gap between routine cleanup and reactive deletion once reporters started asking questions.

El-Sayed has pushed back directly. He told reporters, “What happened on 9/11 is a disaster. It was a terrible attack on our country”. In a separate interview, he said his goal was building “an America where we are protecting our servicemen and women from being asked to fight in wars we have no business fighting in”. Those statements frame the deleted posts as anti-war commentary rather than disrespect for 9/11 victims. Voters will decide whether that explanation matches the actual text of the posts.

A Predictable Pattern — But That Doesn’t Make It Nothing

Old campaign posts resurfacing right before an election has become almost routine. A recent analysis of political controversies described the pattern as near-scripted: old posts surface, backlash erupts, and the candidate downplays or reframes the remarks. Townhall claimed there were 11 deleted tweets tied to this pattern from El-Sayed’s account between 2020 and 2022, though not all 11 have been published in full. That gap matters. It means part of the public case rests on partial documentation rather than a complete archive anyone can check.

Abdul El-Sayed has been busy hiding his 9/11 tweets as we fast approach its 25th anniversary https://t.co/A0ERDQZT90

— The Jewish Voice (@TJVNEWS) September 3, 2026

None of that changes the core fact pattern. CBS verified real posts with real timestamps making a real comparison between 9/11 deaths and other death tolls. The campaign confirmed a broad deletion policy without denying these specific posts existed. Whether voters view this as callous framing or clumsy anti-war rhetoric, the underlying text is now public, and El-Sayed has had to answer for it directly rather than let it stay buried in a deleted account.