Abdul El-Sayed brings war and gas prices to Fox News, and The Root's cut travels
The Michigan Senate candidate kept steering one interview back to a single question: are more wars making Americans any safer?
The Root
Story of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 96,440 views a day, 24 times a normal first day on this channel (4,040).
Abdul El-Sayed Spars with Fox News Over War, Gas Prices, and Trump | The Root
Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat running for Senate in Michigan, went on Fox News and refused to let the conversation drift. The Root's short of the exchange passed 60,000 views in its first eleven hours, on a channel where a new short usually gathers a few thousand in a whole day.
The clip, as the description lays it out, has El-Sayed pushing back on the case for the war in Iran by tying it to things voters pay for: gas, groceries, the cost to taxpayers and the lives of U.S. service members. More war, he argues, has made the country less safe and life more expensive. Asked why he keeps turning up on outlets with very different audiences, he answers that the person holding the microphone matters less than the people watching.
That approach fits his background. El-Sayed is a physician and epidemiologist who ran Detroit's health department and made his first statewide run in the 2018 Democratic primary for governor, which Gretchen Whitmer won.
The comment section filled more than ten times faster than on a usual first day here, and much of it is about his manner: how short and calm his answers stayed. At least one commenter writes in from Michigan to back him.
The same day, The Root also marked Fannie Lou Hamer's 109th birthday and one year of Black ownership under CEO Ashley Allison.
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- Channel
- The Root
- Subscribers
- 253,000 ▲ 4,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 1,525,827
- Channel views, pace per day
- 259,669 (on a normal day: 230,399)
- Video published
- October 6, 2026
- Video views so far
- 62,827 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 96,440
The numbers
The figures show a short running far ahead of the channel's usual start, with a busy comment section to match.
💡 Test your knowledge
Fannie Lou Hamer, honored by The Root the same day, helped found which party to challenge Mississippi's all-white delegation in 1964?
Hamer was a founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and testified for it before the 1964 Democratic National Convention's Credentials Committee.
