Undercover footage obtained by right-leaning online publication The Midwesterner appears to show a volunteer involved in Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign calling Americans “idiots” and saying he might support some of the Muslim Brotherhood’s activities. The footage shows a man it identified as T.J.
Wolfgram addressing accusations promoted by President Donald Trump that El-Sayed has links to the Muslim Brotherhood. The outlet said that Wolfgram works as the conservative and independent outreach captain for El-Sayed's campaign. Newsweek has learned that the person depicted was a volunteer captain and was not a paid campaign staffer, and that the El-Sayed campaign has hundreds of volunteer captains engaging with various communities.
Newsweek was unable to independently verify The Midwesterner’s more specific description of Wolfgram as the campaign’s conservative and independent outreach captain. The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamist movement founded in Egypt in 1928. Some governments have designated the organization or certain branches as terrorist groups.
In January, the State Department announced that the U.S. had imposed terrorist designations against the Lebanese, Jordanian and Egyptian chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood has also received a terrorist designation. The U.S. has not designated the entire Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group.
Why wouldn’t you support revolutionary movements for your people? I’m not offended by it.” Wolfgram responds: “It’s because Americans are idiots." The person filming then suggests that the Muslim Brotherhood and similar organizations were seeking to protect their own people and questioned why El-Sayed would not support them. Wolfgram then says: “I don’t have any issue with the Muslim Brotherhood.
And if I knew more about it, I might support some of what they do. I mean granted, there’s gonna be cultural differences, so there’s gonna be things about the way they go about what they do that I don’t agree with.” He later adds: “Self-determination includes judgment calls that we don’t agree with. They may choose to treat women in ways that we don’t agree with.
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