In case you missed it, Abdul El-Sayed is desperately trying to hide his anger management issues by retelling his run-in at a Detroit gas station where he angrily smashed a bottle of vodka over religious criticism about the length of his beard – only this time, he conveniently leaves that part out.
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Abdul El-Sayed now leaves out smashed vodka bottle while retelling gas station confrontation over beard
The Midwesterner
September 3, 2026
Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed left out a key detail while recently retelling the story of a confrontation with a Detroit gas station clerk, omitting his previous admission that he smashed a bottle of vodka inside the store.
El-Sayed recounted the encounter while speaking at a rally with Black voters, telling the crowd about a Muslim gas station clerk who questioned the length of his beard shortly after El-Sayed became director of the Detroit Health Department in 2015.
The gentleman in the front, clearly Arab, I bought my Gatorade Zero, I go to pay for it, and he’s like, ‘Hey, you Muslim?’” El-Sayed said. “I’m like, ‘You know I’m Muslim.’ And he’s like, ‘Well, your beard’s a little bit short.’”
El-Sayed said he responded by walking to the back of the store and retrieving a fifth of vodka.
“I bring it to the front, and he’s like, ‘You can’t buy that,’” El-Sayed said. “I was like, ‘Habibi, you can’t sell it.’”
His latest retelling ended there.
When El-Sayed told the same story during a May appearance on the “Intellectually Petty” podcast, however, he described what happened next.
“So, I walk back, I get a fifth of vodka, and put it on the counter,” El-Sayed at the time. “He’s like, ‘Hey, you can’t buy that,’ and I was like, ‘You’re right, and you can’t sell it.’ So, I smashed it on the ground and walked out.”
The incident drew criticism from Republicans earlier this year after the podcast appearance resurfaced during the Democratic primary. El-Sayed’s campaign did not address the destruction of the bottle when Fox News asked about the incident in May.
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Among them was a June 2020 post arguing major American cities spend “WAY TOO MUCH” on police departments and “WAY TOO LITTLE” on schools, health departments, recreation departments and housing.
“Fixing that is what the #Defund movement is about,” El-Sayed wrote.
In another deleted post, El-Sayed argued that “The police have become standing armies we deploy against our own people.”
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The latest gas station retelling also comes as El-Sayed works to consolidate support among Black voters after defeating U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Birmingham, in the Democratic primary. Stevens outperformed El-Sayed by an average of eight percentage points in Michigan counties where Black residents make up at least 15% of the population, according to an analysis cited by Fox News.
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RNC spokesman Hunter Lovell accused El-Sayed of attempting to rewrite his record as he moves into the general election.
“Abdul El-Sayed is desperately trying to moderate his image and hide just how radical and unhinged he really is because he knows he has a serious problem with Black voters,” Lovell said. “But no amount of rewriting history can erase the fact that El-Sayed is a radical socialist with anger management issues who throws a hissy fit when he doesn’t get his way.”
