During an interview with Dr. Abdul el-Sayed -- a Democrat running for the Senate from Michigan -- on Monday's Morning Joe, co-host Joe Scarborough sounded like a Democrat chiding Republicans for cutting taxes on the wealthy and cutting spending on health care at the same time. And none of the other panel members pushed back on any of their Democrat guest's other wild claims, such as accusing the U.S. of funding "genocide" in Gaza or suggesting that it's legal for anyone to buy any gun they want.
After starting the segment by playing an ad by Sayed in which he compared the wealth of billionaires to a ridiculously tall cheeseburger, co-host Mika Brzezinski introduced him as part of a "new class of candidates embracing economic populism," and touted an early endorsement by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), whom she declined to label as a socialist.
Scarborough began the questioning by asking what the Michigan Democrat would do about "gun violence," leading him to declare that "The Second Amendment doesn't mean any gun for anyone, anywhere, anytime," even though it has long been illegal for many criminals and mentally ill people to possess guns.
After co-host Jonathan Lemire asked if Michigan Arabs regret voting for Donald Trump because of the war in Gaza, Sayed claimed:
The last point I want to make here is every dollar that we send to Benjamin Netanyahu to subsidize a genocide is a dollar that's not spent to provide food for children in our community -- schools for our children in our community -- health for folks in our community -- and I think we -- folks understand that. I've been across the state, and no matter where I go -- rooms that are not in Dearborn -- folks understand that reality, and they know they're getting a bum deal.
Toward the end of the segment, the Democrat candidate pushed for more regulations on big businesses and the strengthening of labor unions, and then pushed to raise taxes on the wealthy:
I built a program that provided tens of thousands of pairs of glasses for free, and one of the things people ask is, "How are you going to pay for that?" Well, I kind of think in a moment of deep inequality we should have a billionaire tax. Maybe if you make 100 million bucks, you could pay a little bit more so that the kids in your community have glasses so that the infrastructure in community actually works. Those are all concrete things that we could do if we chose to do them, but not under a system that allows corporations and billionaires to buy off politicians to do their bidding.
Scarborough followed up by cuing up his Democrat guest to further push for more taxes and spending:
I want to ask you, as you go around Michigan and you talk to working Americans, what is -- what is their reaction to the fact that Republicans have cut a trillion dollars in health care spending on this side, and, over here they've cut taxes for billionaires -- for multinational corporations -- for billionaires who run monopolies? They're allowing the consolidation of corporations instead of, like you said, breaking up these monopolies. What are you hearing from people on the ground when you knock on doors and talk to voters?
After Sayed blamed the wealthy for poor people having not enough access to health care, Brzezinski wrapped up the segment without anyone arguing that more government regulation would ration health care even further. This is why people call the channel "MSDNC."
Transcript follows:
MSNBC's Morning Joe
September 29, 2025
9:24 a.m. Eastern
Dr. ABDUL EL-SAYED (in ad): Trump's terrible economy is driving inflation from everything from housing to health care to food. And all of it goes back to one thing: greed. While you're struggling to build the basics, billionaires and corporate CEOs -- they're stacking and rigging the rules to build theirs ever higher. Look, nobody needs $100 billion just like nobody needs a 12-stack cheeseburger. It's not even like you could even enjoy it.
(Abdul el-Sayed is seen on screen with a very tall cheeseburger next to a shorter one.)
MIKA BRZEZINSKI (joking about the size of the huge cheeseburger with co-host Joe Scarborough): Well, I think you would argue with that, but I get the point. A new class of candidates is embracing economic populism and making waves shaking up the Democratic party. And that includes the candidate in the political ad you just saw, Abdul el-Sayed. He is running for the Senate in Michigan after incumbent Democratic Senator Gary Peters announced he would not seek reelection. The seat is seen as crucial for Democrats for the chamber's balance of power in next year's midterm elections.
Since launching his campaign in April, el-Sayed has held more than 100 public events and has visited nearly 60 cities across the state of Michigan. He also got a major boost to his campaign earlier this year when he was one of the first candidates that independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont endorsed for the 2026 midterms. And Abdul Sayed joins now. He is a physician, epidemiologist, and the former health director of Wayne County, Michigan.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Doctor, thank you so much for being with us. Let's talk about the tragedy coming out of your state yesterday. It's one more place where a house of worship is attacking. We have of course seen it with synagogues across the country -- we've seen it, vandalism and shootings at mosques across the country, including a member killed in New Jersey last year. We've seen it in Christian houses of worship. We saw it yesterday at a Mormon church. Talk about that, your concerns, and what in the world can we do to stem this tide of gun violence?
(...)
Dr. ABDUL EL-SAYED (D-MI), SENATE CANDIDATE: ... I know that when you have a scourge of a thing that harms people, you have a responsibility to start asking, "How do you actually solve that?" And you look at all of the string of violence that we've seen, and they tend to have something in common. I think we have a responsibility as a country to stand together -- to stand up for our children, for our elders, for folks just going to church on a Sunday, to say that "Enough is enough -- we need to have a conversation about gun violence," right? The 2nd Amendment doesn't mean any gun for anyone anywhere anytime. It means that we understand that there was a space for this, but not this, not that people walk into a church on Sunday and get gunned down, and so we need to have that conversation. We need to have it urgently. I'm hoping to sit down with folks -- everyone including gun owners to folks who are victims of gun violence to ask, "Where is the way forward?" because this -- this here ain't it.
BRZEZINSKI: So, Doctor, we have a lot of issues to think of as a candidate you could focus on -- guns being one of them, the weaponization of the Department of Justice being another one. The National Guard going into our cities potentially across the country being yet another one of them. So where does affordability across the board play a role in terms of your message as a candidate pointing back to your political ad that we came in with?
(Dr. ABDUL EL-SAYED)
JONATHAN LEMIRE: So, Abdul, you're facing a crowded primary field for an important Senate race next year, but also of course Michigan looms large as a presidential swing state. Highly contested last year, Donald Trump won it again after losing it in 2020. Polling suggests that for a lot of Michigan residents in Dearborn and other places, the war in Gaza was a significant issue, and many of them broke for Trump or stayed at home because they were angry about how President Biden was handling that issue. Was your sense, as you talk to that community, do people regret that vote? And how do you see that playing into next year's campaign as the war simply continues, and Israel has only picked up their offensive under Donald Trump?
SAYED: I think all of us ought to regret the circumstances that led to that. I endorsed Kamala Harris down the stretch not because I agreed with the administration's handling of Gaza, but because I believed that whether you see this from the eyes of a child in Detroit or the eyes of a child in Gaza, that Trump would have been a disaster. And we're seeing that play out right now. So everybody is deeply frustrated, but it shouldn't have had to be this way. Imagine we had the conversation last summer that we had this summer about the realities on the ground -- 18,500 kids dead -- I think we might have been in very different circumstances. And so I think the only way forward is for us as a party to stand up. This has become a Rorschach test on values -- like, you say you want to stand up for democracy, you say you want to take on the pharma CEOs that are making prescription drugs too expensive, and yet you can't call out the enforced wisdom in your own party about 18,500 people dead? I just think that it is time for truth. It's time for us to address the circumstances as it -- as it -- as it lays.
The last point I want to make here is every dollar that we send to Benjamin Netanyahu to subsidize a genocide is a dollar that's not spent to provide food for children in our community -- schools for our children in our community -- health for folks in our community -- and I think we -- folks understand that. I've been across the state, and no matter where I go -- rooms that are not in Dearborn -- folks understand that reality, and they know they're getting a bum deal.
LEMIRE: So the headline today has the President meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu -- headline tomorrow potentially government shutdown. If you were in the Senate now, what would your vote be? And do you have faith in the leadership of Minority Leader Schumer? Would you want his support for your campaign?
(SAYED)
AL SHARPTON: Doctor, you're running for a seat Gary Peters had who had built some strong relationships around the Michigan community. As you may know, I have a chapter of National Action Network, Reverend Williams, strongly in Detroit, so I'm familiar with Michigan politics. ... A, what would be -- how do you propose as U.S. Senator to deal with the affordability issue in a concrete way? And how do you build a coalition? Because there's been tensions there. There are no black members of Congress now from Michigan, first time in decades. How do you build that with other communities -- the Arab American community which is substantial, progressive white community and black community which has had some tension. Not total breakup, some tension.
(...)
SAYED: You asked about affordability. How do you do it? Right now, we are watching as corporations have amassed more power than they've ever had since the Gilded Age. We need a Federal Trade Commission under folks like Lina Khan who is going to stand up and actually bust trusts again. We need to instead of subsidizing huge corporations, we should subsidize small businesses. They're the ones who actually make jobs in our economy. We need strong unions -- we need to pass the PRO Act and empower unions to both form and build across sectors in our country.
And, finally, folks say -- when you said -- I built a program that provided tens of thousands of pairs of glasses for free, and one of the things people ask is, "How are you going to pay for that?" Well, I kind of think in a moment of deep inequality we should have a billionaire tax. Maybe if you make 100 million bucks, you could pay a little bit more so that the kids in your community have glasses so that the infrastructure in community actually works. Those are all concrete things that we could do if we chose to do them, but not under a system that allows corporations and billionaires to buy off politicians to do their bidding.
SCARBOROUGH: Doctor, I wanted to ask you about that. I mean, you know, for years we've heard about -- since Bill Clinton's victory, we've heard about Macomb County and how Macomb County swings back and forth -- but it was really more of a symbol for working Americans. I want to ask you, as you go around Michigan and you talk to working Americans, what is -- what is their reaction to the fact that Republicans have cut a trillion dollars in health care spending on this side, and, over here they've cut taxes for billionaires -- for multinational corporations -- for billionaires who run monopolies? They're allowing the consolidation of corporations instead of, like you said, breaking up these monopolies. What are you hearing from people on the ground when you knock on doors and talk to voters?
SAYED: Joe, I appreciate that question because folks feel deeply betrayed, and they feel like they voted for somebody who said that he was going to unlock the system for them, and all he's done is he's locked it up even further and thrown away the key. And I was in Sault Ste. Marie in the upper part of the Upper Peninsula, and they were telling me there's a 2,000-person wait list to see a dentist -- to see a dentist. And the crazy thing is, I've served in Detroit and in Wayne County, and there are very long lines of dentists there, too.
I think the real axis of our politics isn't right or left. It's: Are you locked out of the system or are you one of the ones doing the locking out? And so folks are curious, and they're interested in something that's a little bit different -- something that doesn't look like politics as usual. And they want access to the basic means of a dignified life -- a good job that pays a living wage, ability to afford your home, to ever believe you could own a home if you're over 40, the ability to buy a little extra to make some burgers on the weekends.
These are basic things that folks don't have. And in a moment -- in a time when 68 percent of people are going bankrupt just for getting cancer, we can solve our problems if we're willing to do that. And that means you've got to build a movement around unlocking the system that's going to take people who voted for Kamala Harris, people who voted Donald Trump, but people who are voting for their future.
BRZEZINSKI: Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan, Abdul el-Sayed, thanks you very much for coming on the show today.
