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Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed is catching flak from across the political spectrum for comparing circumcision to child sex changes during a Monday night appearance on “Jesse Watters Primetime.”
“So you think it’s okay for a parent to slash his kid’s ding-a-ling off?” Watters asked El-Sayed.
“Are you circumcised?” El-Sayed asked Watters.
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Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed joined “Jesse Watters Primetime” on Monday. (Fox News)
“Circumcision’s different than castration,” Watters responded.
“It’s a problem that you think you get to decide what happens between a parent, a doctor and a patient,” El-Sayed went on. “I’m just saying that, yes, circumcision is surgery on a kid’s ding-a-ling.”
Even some on the left didn’t buy into El-Sayed’s attempt to compare sex changes with circumcision.
“This talking point isn’t it,”Ryan Grim, a co-founder of the left-wing outlet DropSite News, wrote in response to a clip of the exchange.
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Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive candidate in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Michigan, speaks during a primary election night event Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026, at the Majestic Theatre in Detroit. (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP Photo)
“I’m actually agreeing with Jesse Waters…” Andrew Laufer, a New York-based civil rights attorney, posted.
“Abdul El-Sayed just compared circumcision to chopping a kid’s entire penis off. Circumcision and castration are not the same, Abdul! Play this on repeat through November,” Turning Point USA spokesperson Andrew Kolvet wrote.
“He might be worse than Kamala Harris,” conservative pundit Benny Johnson posted.
“Holy crap, Abdul El-Sayed said circumcision is similar to sex change operations on minors,” OutKick founder Clay Travis wrote.
Others took opportunities to poke fun at El-Sayed for asking a news host about his penis during a nationally televised interview by making puns.
“Interested to see El-Sayed’s pole numbers after this,” Washington Free Beacon reporter Chuck Ross quipped.
Some, however, took a more serious tone.
“Sex-rejecting surgeries are not comparable to circumcision, and everyone on this planet knows that, including El-Sayed,” the senior policy director of the right-of-center organization Do No Harm said. “Candidates who choose to die on this hill will deserve their election losses.”
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Michigan U.S. Senate candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, speaks with the media after a debate at WoodTV studios on Tuesday, July 7, 2026, in Grand Rapids, Mich. (AP Photo/Kristen Norman)
“El-Sayed obviously knows the difference between circumcision and castration,” Singaporean journalist and activist Melissa Chen wrote. “He just can’t say it out loud without pissing off the trans activists who make up his base now … Because he is locked into defending every absurd piece of gender ideology, he can’t actually answer Jesse Waters’ simple question of whether he supports gender-affirming care for under 18 year olds.”
Circumcision is an elective surgical procedure that is generally performed on infants, though some medical experts and critics have raised concerns about consent, medical necessity and the risks associated with the procedure.
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The El-Sayed campaign did not respond to a request for comment when reached by Fox News Digital on Tuesday.
