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CBS boss fuels left-wing uproar amid report she urged staff to probe alleged El-Sayed, Muslim Brotherhood ties

20 October 2026 at 17:07

CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss is taking heat from the left yet again, this time over a report urging her staff to probe Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed's potential ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Semafor reported Sunday that Weiss "personally advocated for CBS News journalists to pursue numerous story angles related to El-Sayed’s supposed sympathy towards the Muslim Brotherhood."

The report cited two anonymous CBS News staffers who were aggrieved by Weiss' directive. Anonymous CBS News staffers complaining about their boss to liberal media outlets has become commonplace in the media industry. 

CONTROVERSY OVER ABDUL EL-SAYED'S FAMILY TIES TO MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD IGNORED, DOWNPLAYED BY LIBERAL MEDIA

NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham believes disgruntled CBS News employees constantly offering anonymous quotes to liberal publications in an effort to smear Weiss "helps reinforce" the longstanding bias toward the left. 

"She’s making them do difficult things," Graham told Fox News Digital. 

"Can we look into whether Abdul El-Sayed has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, like his family says they do? How dare you," Graham quipped. "You’re not supposed to do stories that might make Democrats look bad."

While Weiss’ defenders have suggested staffers are essentially irked that she asked them to do journalism, progressives lashed out against Weiss over the latest report.

"A rightwing, pro-Israel, anti-Muslim troll who has zero qualifications to be running national TV network is in fact running a national TV network and trying to get it to behave like a rightwing, pro-Israel, anti-Muslim troll," far-left Zeteo founder and former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan reacted on X.

"No self-respecting journalist should work for Bari Weiss," The Nation correspondent Jeet Heer wrote.

"Nobody should respect or trust ANYTHING coming out of @CBSNews at this point," far-left activist Shaun King exclaimed.

Notably, CBS News largely refrained from covering the controversy that blew up last week when unearthed social media posts from his half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, claimed their family, including their mother, had ties to the controversial Islamist group after he flatly denied there was any connection to NBC's Kristen Welker.

"Had an amazing talk with my mom about her activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during the early 70s while she was in college #respect," Abdelhadi wrote in a 2012 X post, as first reported by the Washington Free Beacon.

Their mother, Fatten Elkomy, had attended Egypt's Alexandria University, which, according to a report from the Brookings Institution, had strong Muslim Brotherhood activity back in the 1970s.

In another 2012 post, Abdelhadi, a professor at the University of Chicago, wrote, "My family has long been MB, but I've always felt that it has navigated the political sphere poorly/destructively."

In a third post from 2013, she wrote, "Praying for all my family that supports the #MB in #Egypt. Lie low, stay safe."

ABDUL EL-SAYED GROWS AGITATED WITH REPORTER AFTER BEING PRESSED ON FAMILY'S ALLEGED MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD TIES

Graham feels that CBS News staffers who didn’t want to look into the El-Sayed story must find it "wildly offensive" to even consider a conservative point of view. 

"They object [to] the idea that they have to be somehow a little bit fair and balanced," Graham said. 

As for El-Sayed, he recently doubled down on his denial during a contentious exchange with NBC's Tom Llamas.

"It's funny to me," El-Sayed responded. "I was born in 1984 down the street in Rochester Hills. I was raised here in Michigan, went to the University of Michigan, rebuilt the health department in this city, led the health department in this county — and you want to ask me about what's happening in Egypt in 1970? Are you serious?"

"I get it, but you were asked a question, and you gave an answer," Llamas responded.

"I have no ties, we have no ties," El-Sayed said, reiterating his denial.

CBS CHIEF BARI WEISS' INVOLVEMENT IN VIRAL EL-SAYED REPORT SPARKS DEBATE AMONG CRITICS

The Democratic hopeful told Llamas he hadn't had conversations with his mother about her alleged Muslim Brotherhood activity and accused the anchor of using "hearsay evidence from a tweet."

"That's just not serious," El-Sayed said.

"But you've also gone after the president for truthfulness and when people ask you a question, do you expect the truth?" Llamas then asked.

"Are you insinuating that somehow I was lying?" El-Sayed fired back.

"I don't know, that's why I'm asking," Llamas responded.

"And I'm telling you that I was not," El-Sayed told him.

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In an interview on MS NOW, El-Sayed likened the questions about his family allegiances to ones John F. Kennedy faced as a Catholic while running for president in 1960.

European Parliament votes to confront Muslim Brotherhood, 'Islamist entryism' in overwhelming vote

18 October 2026 at 11:30

Following the sanctioning of foreign Muslim Brotherhood groups by the Trump administration, the European Parliament recently took its own action against the transnational radical Islamist group.

As Europe begins to respond to the threat of radical Islam across the continent, an overwhelming majority of the European Parliament voted for a resolution that condemned the Muslim Brotherhood and its actions.

European Parliament member Céline Imart of France, who sponsored the resolution, called the vote "a historic victory because it is a European first. For the first time, Europe has voted on a text that tackles Islamist entryism and the Muslim Brotherhood."

EUROPE’S LEFT COURTS MUSLIM VOTERS AS ANTI-ISRAEL POLITICS RESHAPE CONTINENT

Imart posted on X that she had "broken a taboo that Europe has been dragging around like a chain: this victory signifies a major doctrinal shift in the institutions… We were able to transcend partisan divides on a major issue for our societies and our youth."

Lorenzo Vidino, director of the program on extremism at George Washington University, told Fox News Digital that, "This is something that the French and the Austrian governments have been pushing for almost a decade," noting a growing consensus across Europe that wants action.

The resolution was led by the European People’s Party, or EPP, a center-right coalition that is the largest group in the European Parliament. "The voting does reflect a gap between the right and the left," said Vidino, "with the right voting almost entirely in favor of the resolution, and a good part of the left, although with some notable exceptions, voting against it."

As part of her post on X, Imart made it a point to thank "the negotiators from the other groups with whom I had the pleasure of working - excluding the socialists and the far left, who boycotted the text."

Vidino said, "The Brotherhood remains something that is seen through the political lenses of our own political debates, where it shouldn't be... because it's a challenge to our societies."

DENMARK'S LEFT-WING PM WARNS: 'BIG ENEMY HAS STARTED TO GROW FROM WITHIN' AS EUROPE FACES MIGRANT RECKONING

A press release on the resolution issued by the European Parliament's news website stated that Islamist entryism targets "democratic institutions, the rule of law, equality between women and men and fundamental freedoms." It stressed that Muslim citizens must be protected from discrimination as "a democratic obligation," while "warning against treating organized Islamist networks as representative interlocutors."

The release also stated, "While Europe must remain free, open and faithful to its principles, it can ‘no longer fund, consult or legitimize networks that use its language, procedures and funding to weaken its values from within,’" but "MEPs stress that anti-discrimination policies must not be used to shield Islam from criticism or legitimize organized Islamist networks."

The resolution was slammed by ENAR, a pan-European anti-racism network, which released a statement following its passage. "ENAR condemns in the strongest possible terms the racist and Islamophobic resolution "on the need for an EU strategy to counter Islamist entryism and the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood network" proposed by the European People’s Party (EPP) and passed by the European Parliament today, including its targeting of ENAR and its members like FEMYSO through sham allegations and falsehoods seeking to associate our network with the Muslim Brotherhood. ENAR categorically rejects these claims."

It added in part, "This resolution is a stain on the European Parliament and marks a profoundly shameful day in Europe’s history. A Parliament that should defend democracy, equality and fundamental rights has instead given institutional legitimacy to a racist politics of suspicion that casts Muslim communities, Muslim-led civil society, organizations combating Islamophobia, and those who defend their rights as inherently suspect." 

Edmund Fitton-Brown, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told Fox News Digital "This resolution is where the pushback begins against Islamist entryism in Europe. It is admirably clearly worded. The task of converting it into binding legislation begins now and will be difficult."

The former UK ambassador to Yemen, Fitton-Brown added, "Europe regularly imagines that "legal", "non-violent" Islamism is in conflict with, and a potential antidote to, violent Islamist terrorism. It is not, it is a gateway to it, it creates the climate for it, and the two are pursuing the same goals, only via different tactics."

He added, "Europe fails to prioritize subversion as a threat, whereas during the Cold War it understood that threat and took serious measures to counter it. Europe also seeks to appease Islamist entryism by adopting hostile policies towards Israel, and sometimes by passing blasphemy-adjacent and anti-"Islamophobia" laws, thinking they are protecting the Muslim community. In fact, the main victims of these laws are liberal Muslims trying to escape the confines of their community and enjoy Western freedoms."

Asked about the differences between Europe and the U.S. approach to the Brotherhood, Vidino said the European way is "a bit more nuanced" than that of the U.S., where the Trump administration has designated the Muslim Brotherhood and 4 of its branches as terrorist organizations. He says Europe sees the Muslim Brotherhood "mostly through the lenses of entryism, of subversion, of a group that destroys the fabrics of society… a matter of a threat to democracy, but a lot of the activities of the Brotherhood might be legal if taken individually."

TRUMP ADMIN ACCUSES HAMAS OF BACKING GAZA FLOTILLA, SANCTIONS ACTIVIST AND MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD NETWORKS

While noting that numerous security services across Europe have been warning about the Muslim Brotherhood for some time, Vidino says the resolution "sets the tone. It gives a political push," suggesting agencies and governments "might feel more legitimized in seeing the Brotherhood in negative ways."

"I'm a bit skeptical on whether this resolution would have a major tangible impact," Vidino added. "Islamist groups are very good at camouflaging their activities." While there is "no organization that calls itself Muslim Brotherhood in Europe," he said if and when funding is pulled from an Islamist organization by the EU, "They will make a fuss… They fight back. They have an ability to also leverage what could be a crisis, but turn it to their advantage by playing the victim card and the Islamophobia card."

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As part of the resolution, the European Council was asked to assess whether entities or individuals linked to the Muslim Brotherhood should be added to the EU list of terrorist organizations. It called for full traceability of EU funding and a European Commission overview of EU funds awarded to people or entities suspected of links to the Muslim Brotherhood or political Islam. 

It also welcomed initiatives by member states to draw up national lists of hate preachers and calls for the establishment of such a list at EU level, while also calling for stronger scrutiny of foreign funding and transnational partnerships, particularly involving actors linked to Qatar or Turkey and greater use of Schengen tools and EU databases.

"This vote is a victory, but it is also a starting point," Imart said. "The Commission and the Council must now take action, and I will make sure they do."

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