NBC’s Kristen Welker Gives Abdul El-Sayed Interview the Full Rehab Treatment

Jorge Bonilla
October 11th, 2026 3:54 PM

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With about three weeks to go before a critical midterm election, you can always count on the Elitist Media to project Democrats in the best possible light. Such was the case for NBC. as Kristen Welker sat down with Michigan Democrat Senate nominee Abdulrahman Mohammed El-Sayed, for what amounted to a ritual warm tongue bath.

The most notable part of the interview is what it omits: El-Sayed’s loudest surrogate, champagne socialist streamer Hasan Piker. Welker did not ask a single question about El-Sayed’s relationship with Piker or about any of Piker’s past controversial statements. Neither did Welker address Piker’s presence at El-Sayed’s primary victory party. They addressed the elephant in the room by pretending it wasn’t there at all.

Instead, Welker and El-Sayed devoted a significant part of the interview to walking back El-Sayed’s past swipes at Former President Barack Obama, which occupied six out of the 32 minutes of the full interview uploaded to YouTube. Watch as El-Sayed goes from calling Obama a failure to all but calling him “Daddy:”

 

 

KRISTEN WELKER: You have been critical, though, of President Obama after voting for his reelection in 2012. You wrote, quote, "Obama was not the right choice. He just wasn't the wrong one. This leader has perpetrated 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." Do you still see President Obama's presidency as a failure?

ABDUL EL-SAYED:  Well, we've lived through two Trump terms now. So, look, I know that President Obama was handed a really difficult set of circumstances, and he did his best. I also want to step back. Kristen, are your parents still with us? 

WELKER: They are. Thank goodness. 

EL-SAYED: Thank goodness. Mine are too. And I think about my dad. I wouldn't have my life before my dad's efforts so grateful for him. At the same time, there's a lot of things about my dad I’d do differently, right? And 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'd want to change. I can't say how much I appreciate President Obama. I've read everything he's written twice. And it's because he was the president of my 20s. I mean, it was the first time I ever saw myself in politics. I remember when he gave that 2004 commencement speech- excuse me, DNC speech. 

And I’ve never seen politics look like that. He showed me something in myself I would never have seen without him. I mean, he has run the elegance, the grace, the commitment under pressure, the- just the basket of terrible things he was handed by the Bush era. Whether it was a failing economy, wars, a healthcare system that was deeply broken, and the way that he handled it all. Now, that is so much appreciation for what he showed me and me, 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. 

Welker came in for some mild pushback but El-Sayed was allowed to run free, volunteering his unsolicited support for Obama’s ill-fated Cuba deal:

 

 

The exchange on Obama was followed up by Medicare for All. Here, Welker gave El-Sayed some very mild follow-up after he offered up his own version of “if you like your healthcare you can keep your healthcare” and immediately backtracked by saying it was up to the insurance companies.  

The interview then covered, in order: tariffs (“NAFTA is a cancer”), impeachment, John Fetterman, his “hurt people hurt people” justification of the jihadist that attacked Temple Israel, and a rebuttal of Mike Rogers linking him to the Muslim Brotherhood. The edited-for-broadcast-on-NBC portion of the interview cuts off here. 

Welker then proceeds to ask El-Sayed whether billionaires should exist. El-Sayed responds to that socialist dog whistle by proclaiming support for a tax on wealth over $100 million dollars.

 

 

WELKER: I have a couple more questions and I know we're almost out of time. I do want to talk about the economy. You have said “I'd rather have an economy that makes a thousand millionaires than one billionaire. Do you think billionaires should exist?”

EL-SAYED: I think billionaires should pay their fair share back into the system. I believe that means we have to pass a wealth tax. I think when you start taxing billionaire wealth, you have the opportunity to return trillions of dollars back to the economy to allow other people to participate.I think right now about kids going to school in Detroit, they're going to school in buildings that look like they did 50 years ago. I don't know that they have the opportunities to be able to go and become that millionaire. So what should we do? I think we should tax billionaire wealth, take some of that money, bring it back to public education, take some of that money, build schools and roads, provide health care, provide childcare. I'm a capitalist, but I believe that too many people can't participate in capitalism because what we have right now is actually corporatism. And if we're not serious about actually making sure everybody can participate in capitalism, then we're not serious about capitalism. 

WELKER: You talk about a wealth tax and some people get nervous that that's going to impact them. 

EL-SAYED: Well, if you’re a billionaire you should get nervous. That's going to impact them.

WELKER: Where's the cutoff and what's the percentage? 

EL-SAYED: $100 million, right?

WELKER: Only people with $100 million.

EL-SAYED: If you were to tax people with $100 million or more, a wealth tax. We’re not even talking about a serious wealth- I just want to think this through, okay? Imagine you tax based on wealth based on what your money made last year. If you're a billionaire, you don't make your money off of the money you earn working. You make your money off of your money. So if you're a billionaire earning 10% on your billion, you're making $100 million. So even if we tax you at 8%, you know what you still made? $20 million, doing nothing. You're going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. I think the rest of us need to know that our kids get good schools. We need to know that our roads and bridges work. We need to know that we can actually participate in this thing so that those kids in those schools in Detroit can actually say, you know what? Someday, I'm going to start a business and I'm going to be a millionaire. 

This is a moment where a Republican under similar circumstances would have been grilled. El-Sayed certainly warranted a follow-up here after screaming from the rooftops that he is not a socialist. But Welker offered El-Sayed no pushback on the wealth tax, instead going straight to court-packing:

 

 

This was followed by an exchange on whether 2026 needed to be “too big to rig,” which proves all the caterwauling about election denialism to be hypocritical (this portion made it to air).

 

 

There was a question on 2028 which El-Sayed deflected and, finally, the big “is America ready for a Muslim President:”

 

 

This was not an interview, so much as a friendly exchange of ideas and an opportunity for El-Sayed to perform significant image rehab ahead of the midterm election. There was never a wide-eyed outburst from Welker here, no cutting El-Sayed off, no squinting and pointing at him with her pen and no seven followups to a tough question (there were no tough questions) with her customary “to put a fine point on it.” 

Par for the course for the Elitist Media, still putting their thumbs on the scale in order to affect the balance of power in Washington.

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