Abdul El-Sayed — Abdul El-Sayed Visits New Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Pontiac with Dr. Keyon S. Payton

If there's any questions or comments, concerns that you all may want to raise directly while we have brother Elsayed present, I'll give you that opportunity if you want to ask him any question or you have any concerns about anything you've heard about him or his campaign. >> The negativity. >> The negativity. Thank you for raising it. >> coming. >> Yeah. So, do you all know what AIPAC is? AIPAC is an organization dedicated to making sure that our federal government's foreign interests are more focused on the interests our government's foreign interests are more focused on the interests of a foreign government than they are ours. AIPAC stands for American Israel Political Action Committee. Public Affairs Committee, thank you. And they want us to continue to send $3.3 billion to to a foreign government that they've used to drop bombs on children in places like Gaza rather than to keep that $3.3 billion here. I have been clear about the idea that I love and revere my Jewish neighbors. But I also love and revere the Palestinian people. And most of all I love and revere kids in Michigan who deserve to know that they have their tax dollars spent here, to provide health care here, to rebuild our schools here, to do what needs to be done here rather than send it to a foreign government to foreclose on the possibility of Palestinian self-determination, to do genocide and apartheid and annexation of other countries. And because I'm willing to say that, they have set a record in this race, $30 and you've seen that in attack ad after attack ad after attack ad on my character. Now, here's what I've always learned. When they stop arguing the issue with you and attack your character, it's because you won the argument. And when they've got money that they can spend that much, they understand that they can change minds and change hearts and poison minds and poison hearts. And that's what they've chosen to do now. They make specific allegations about me in that ad. I'm an epidemiologist by training. My work has always been about public health. Our first lady, Michelle Obama, led an incredible program called Let's Move. You all remember that program? And I wrote an op-ed about the program, praising the program, but also saying that it missed some of the key points it should have missed. And they took that op-ed and said that because I said that she missed some of the points, that I was being personally disrespectful to the first lady. Which kind of sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? What better way to respect somebody than to take their ideas and their program seriously? To say what's great about them and also to say what could be better. Or I ran for governor back in 2018. I ran against Governor Whitmer, who took $500,000 from Blue Cross Blue Shield, who raised your premiums last year by 15%. And I said that that is the same kind of politics that has us bought and sold that is the problem with our politics in the first place. That wasn't about Governor Whitmer. That was about a system of politics that too many politicians play that I don't. I've never taken a dime from a corporation to run a campaign. I will never take a dime from a corporation to run a campaign because I want to run for the people rather than against them. And again, they said that that was about disrespect. >> [applause] >> That's not about disrespect. That's about our politics because I find it disrespectful that we allow a corporation to play in our politics, to force us to pay more for things we cannot go without. That to me is disrespectful. Or they've picked this idea that a gentleman we asked to leave our campaign because of his treatment of people. Has said that somehow I mistreated people. But again, they never got my side of the story. And it's easy when you want to sow a narrative about somebody and drop $15 million in ads to assassinate their character not to tell the whole story. And I want to ask you this, if I was truly disrespectful to women, you'd think that they would find something that's a little stronger than that. I spent my whole career in public health, which is 85% women. You can't achieve the things that we achieved in the city of Detroit or Wayne County, rebuilding that health department and leading the other without being respectful to women. And I'll finish here. My wife is a doctor. She's smarter than me. My mother who raised me was the first tenured professor of engineering at her university. I'm raising two daughters to be stronger than any man. My whole life happens because of my grandmother, whose story I led with out of respect for who she was and what she did for me. I am not who I am without the strong women in my life, without the respect that I've shown them and the care they've shown me. And so, unfortunately, when you stand in and you try to do the right things, they say terrible things about you. I knew what I was what I was going to face. And in the end, the reason I've decided not to flinch, not to back down, is because I believe that the best thing we can do for women and children across this world is to make sure that our tax dollars aren't spent taking the lives of women and children in places like Gaza or Southern Lebanon or the West Bank and investing in the health care that saves the lives of women and children in places like Michigan. >> [applause]