Abdul El-Sayed arrived on Capitol Hill this week with high hopes. His victory in the Michigan Senate race was generating buzz about a run for president in 2028. No less an authority than David Plouffe, the former Obama adviser and architect of Kamala Harris's joyful White House effort, floated El-Sayed as a dark horse contender for the nomination.
Then the photographers arrived.
Several photos of El-Sayed and his fellow Democratic senators-elect surfaced online, prompting a lively discussion among political commentators. In one group shot of the Democrats meeting the Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), El-Sayed was barely visible behind Iowa senator-elect Josh Turek, a former Paralympic wheelchair basketball player.
A Washington Free Beacon analysis, drawing on every available camera angle, failed to disprove allegations that Turek's wheelchair was strategically positioned to conceal a box or other stature-enhancing apparatus under El-Sayed's feet. Some context: Turek is listed at 5'11". El-Sayed has long claimed (without evidence) to be 5'9" in shoes.
Other images proved just as unsettling. For example, observers marveled at the extent to which Schumer—himself reportedly 5'9"—was forced to contort his spine to meet El-Sayed's gaze. The Senate leader's hunched posture evoked painful memories of former president Barack Obama's servile bow before the Japanese emperor on Nov. 14, 2009—a date that will live in infamy.
Others were similarly appalled by a photo of El-Sayed chatting flirtatiously with Annie Andrews, an actual doctor who defeated the late senator Lindsey Graham's sister in South Carolina. Andrews, wearing flats, appeared to tower over El-Sayed both in physical stature and personal magnetism. The Free Beacon's analysis could not definitively determine whether El-Sayed's tie was designed for adult men or had been subsequently altered in some way.
The Democratic Party promoted the image on its official X account in what can only be described as an act of violence. "OK maybe El-Sayed isn't a dark horse for 2028," journalist Matthew Zeitlin wrote in response.
It's true that El-Sayed has already made history. He is the first Muslim-affiliated narcissist elected to the U.S. Senate from a Midwestern state since Barack Obama in 2004. Becoming president would be an even taller order.
Whatever El-Sayed's true height may be, no one believe he's 5'9". The United States hasn't elected a president shorter than that since Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876.
Good luck!
