Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed refused to defend the Green New Deal during a Fox News interview, but a review of his deleted social media posts reveals he championed the proposal by name dozens of times before scrubbing his record.
El-Sayed appeared on "Jesse Watters Primetime" on Monday and flatly declined to stand behind the sweeping progressive energy proposal when the host pressed him on his history with it. "Look, I'm not going to defend the Green New Deal," El-Sayed told Watters. Instead, he steered the conversation toward lowering energy costs and creating jobs in Michigan through renewable energy, language far removed from the fiery advocacy he published across social media in 2019.
That pivot might have gone unchallenged if not for the Internet Archive. Fox News Digital reviewed El-Sayed's deleted social media posts, preserved through the archive service, and found dozens of examples of the candidate defending the Green New Deal by name. Since announcing his Senate candidacy, El-Sayed has not posted the phrase "Green New Deal" even once.
The gap between El-Sayed's public record and his current campaign posture is not a matter of interpretation. It is documented, timestamped, and preserved, even after he tried to erase it.
The deleted posts span at least nine months in 2019, the same year Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts floated the Green New Deal, a framework aimed at gradually transitioning the nation's electrical grid away from fossil fuels. El-Sayed did not merely signal agreement. He made the proposal a centerpiece of his public commentary.
In January 2019, he posted about the North American International Auto Show:
"Rather than announcing the next iteration of this or that car at [the North American International Auto Show 2019], I'd love to see automakers announce that they support the #GreenNewDeal."
That post landed in a state where the auto industry remains the backbone of the economy, a fact that makes the statement politically radioactive in a general election. El-Sayed's primary opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens, criticized him on exactly those grounds during the campaign, arguing his Green New Deal support could lead to job losses in automobile manufacturing.
By April 2019, El-Sayed had escalated the rhetoric. He wrote that "the struggle for the Green New Deal uplifts the struggle for racial justice." By September, he posted "I believe in a Green New Deal" five times in all caps in a single post. In the same message, he suggested the proposal was essential to preserving free speech itself, arguing there can be no First Amendment "without the freedom to breathe the breath you have to take to speak in the first place."
Another undated but pre-candidacy post went further still:
"The #GreenNewDeal doesn't center polar bears or glaciers, it centers those children forced to breath (sic.) in corporate pollution in their communities. I stand with the Green New Deal because it stands for those kids."
These are not ambiguous statements. They are not offhand mentions. They are full-throated endorsements of a specific policy, posted repeatedly over many months. And every one of them was deleted before El-Sayed asked Michigan voters to send him to the Senate.
The Green New Deal is not the only position El-Sayed has tried to distance himself from by deleting the evidence. CNN previously reported that El-Sayed scrubbed large swathes of his online commentary before launching his Senate bid. The Fox News Digital review found that the cleanup extended across multiple hot-button issues.
In since-deleted posts, El-Sayed endorsed the "defund the police" movement, argued that cities spent too much money policing poverty, and described police departments as "standing armies we deploy against our own people." Those positions would be difficult to defend in any swing state. In Michigan, where Trump won in 2024 after losing the state in 2020, they would be disqualifying for many voters.
El-Sayed's record of scrubbing old content is not limited to his Green New Deal advocacy. He has also faced scrutiny over deleted videos in which he attacked July 4th fireworks and the Second Amendment.
In a YouTube video that was later hidden from public view, El-Sayed floated replacing the Second Amendment's right to bear arms with a constitutional right to healthcare. In the same video, he called Border Patrol agents "white supremacists" and blamed American policies for migration from struggling nations. Those remarks did not survive the transition from progressive commentator to Senate candidate.
El-Sayed's campaign did not respond when Fox News Digital reached out for comment on Tuesday.
Michigan is shaping up to host one of the most competitive Senate races in the country. El-Sayed won his primary despite Democrats spending $63.9 million trying to stop him. His path to the general election required surviving attacks from within his own party, attacks built, in part, on the same radical positions he is now trying to erase.
Stevens, his primary rival, warned that his Green New Deal support threatened Michigan auto jobs. That argument failed to stop him in a Democratic primary. Whether it resonates with general-election voters in a state Trump carried two years ago is a different question entirely.
The candidate's strategy appears straightforward: delete the posts, soften the language, and hope voters never see the originals. On energy, talk about lowering costs and creating jobs. On policing, avoid the subject. On the Second Amendment, say nothing. On border enforcement, change the topic.
But the Internet Archive does not forget. And the pattern of concealment extends beyond policy. El-Sayed has drawn controversy for resurfaced audio in which he downplayed a terrorist attack on a Michigan synagogue, and he has faced questions about his continued association with figures whose remarks he himself called indefensible, yet he kept campaigning alongside them anyway.
El-Sayed told Jesse Watters he would not defend the Green New Deal. The deleted posts show he spent the better part of a year doing exactly that, in his own words, in all caps, over and over again. The question for Michigan voters is not what El-Sayed believes now. It is whether a candidate who systematically erases his own record can be trusted to tell them.
A man who deletes his convictions before every election is not moderating. He is hiding.
