Fetterman Hits Back After Progressive Senate Candidate Threatens to Put An ‘Ogre on a Pike’
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Progressive Michigan candidate for the U.S. Senate Abdul El-Sayed was revealed in a Monday report from Politico to have threatened Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) in a recent Zoom call with donors, saying he’d like to send a message inside his party by putting “one ogre on a pike.”
Liz Crampton scooped the news, which quickly went viral online and led to a wave of condemnation of El-Sayed.
“If I win … well y’all came at me so now I get to come at you, and you know, primarying people like John Fetterman, I have no problem to do that,” he said, according to audio of the Zoom call Crampton obtained.
“Ideally you put one ogre on a pike, and then everyone else gets the message, and all of a sudden starts to sound a lot different,” El-Sayed added later in the call while discussing his plans to bolster the progressive movement while in office.
Fetterman hit back at El-Sayed in a statement to Politico, saying, “I pick being Senator Shrek over being the Pontiac Platner any day” – referring to former progressive U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner. Crampton reported on El-Sayed’s campaign’s statement to her:
An El-Sayed campaign spokesperson referred POLITICO back to an earlier statement that the candidate was “speaking metaphorically” about his intention to support a primary against Fetterman, a Pennsylvania senator. Fetterman and El-Sayed have clashed over support for Israel.
Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI), a fierce critic of El-Sayed who has endorsed his opponent Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), pulled no punches in reacting to the comment: “Violent, vulgar threats have no place in a democratic electoral contest. With political violence on the rise, we need to be doing everything we can to lower the temperature — not raise it. It’s the American people who suffer most when we degrade the political process this way.”
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