Trump without evidence calls El-Sayed ‘100%’ Muslim Brotherhood

Former operations director Thomas Teepell has been identified as the man who heckled Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed at a Saturday townhall in Flint, Michigan, and demanded that he disavow the Muslim Brotherhood, according to staff records reviewed by The Guardian.

At the event, the heckler gave his name only as “Tommy.” When Tommy shouted from the crowd, asking whether El-Sayed would disavow the Muslim Brotherhood — one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements, certain chapters of which the US has moved to designate as foreign terrorist organizations under Trump — El-Sayed answered, “Sure, yeah, absolutely.” He then turned the question around, asking Tommy whether he had assumed El-Sayed would not. Tommy said he had simply not heard El-Sayed reject the organization.

Over nearly five minutes, the exchange continued. El-Sayed compared the implication of the question — what he described as a suggestion of “dual loyalty” — to doubts once raised about President John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism, telling the audience he was running for the Senate and “happen[s] to be Muslim.” When El-Sayed asked whether Tommy would disavow any attempt to read religious doctrine into American law, Tommy said he would not. El-Sayed answered that it was Tommy who needed to understand the Constitution, drawing cheers, and Tommy left the room.

The Guardian, citing staff records, identified the heckler as Thomas Teepell. The records indicate Teepell joined Hawley’s office as an intern in 2023 and rose to the role of operations director before leaving in February. He subsequently became political director for Philip Sarnecki’s Kansas gubernatorial campaign; Sarnecki lost the Republican primary on August 4. The Handbasket first reported Teepell’s identification. Teepell is the son of Republican strategist Timmy Teepell, a longtime adviser to Hawley and former Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal.

The Saturday exchange echoes a line of attack that Republicans have pursued against El-Sayed for weeks. During one of his debates with Republican Mike Rogers, Rogers raised alleged Brotherhood ties. After El-Sayed told NBC’s Meet the Press that neither he nor his family had any such ties, the conservative Washington Free Beacon resurfaced social media posts by his half-sister, University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi, describing their mother’s activism in the group during the 1970s. The Guardian reports there is no evidence El-Sayed was personally involved; he was born in the 1980s and was not raised by his birth mother. El-Sayed has called the suggestion that anyone in his family took part “an insane thing to assume.”

On Meet the Press, El-Sayed said Rogers had raised the issue because he “really wanted to repeat the word Muslim.” In a separate NBC interview, he dismissed the questions as “not serious.”

President Donald Trump has gone further. At a White House lunch, Trump said El-Sayed is “100%” Muslim Brotherhood and called him a “fraud”; on another occasion, the President described him as a “member” of the group. Ahead of the weekend, Trump mocked El-Sayed’s name, saying it is “Adulbabababababa Mohammed El-Sayed,” and added: “So I was right. He’s a jihadist.” The Guardian reports these assertions are without evidence.

The attacks come in a close race. El-Sayed holds a narrow lead in the RealClearPolitics average, 48.1% to 45.5%, over Rogers. The most recent survey, from InsiderAdvantage taken October 9–10, had El-Sayed ahead 48% to 46%. Most leads sit within or near the margin of error.

El-Sayed will appear with former President Barack Obama at a Detroit rally on Saturday, October 24 — the first day of in-person early voting in Michigan. Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jocelyn Benson will also appear at the rally. Election day is November 3.