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Fact check: How Tim Scott and a Republican attack ad misleadingly snipped key context from El-Sayed’s ‘dangerous’ speech

By CNN

(CNN) — The leader of Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, Sen. Tim Scott, said in a Sunday interview on CNN that people should believe something Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed supposedly said about himself. But Scott took El-Sayed’s quote out of context. So did an attack ad released last week by the group Scott chairs.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee’s online ad has generated attention and criticism for using the full legal name of El-Sayed, a Muslim former public health official who is running in Michigan against Republican former congressman Mike Rogers. But the ad is also notable for how, like Scott, it uses a misleadingly snipped “dangerous” comment to bolster its case that El-Sayed is a radical.

How Scott and the NRSC ad portrayed El-Sayed’s words

In the CNN interview on Sunday, Scott claimed of El-Sayed: “He says he’s the most dangerous candidate you can find. He’s right. We should trust his words, not ours.” The 30-second ad features a one-second video clip of El-Sayed shouting, “I’m pretty damn dangerous” – immediately before turning to an attack on El-Sayed’s stance toward the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the early 2010s.

What El-Sayed actually said, in full

The full video of El-Sayed’s remarks, at a July 25 campaign event during the Democratic primary he won, shows he was arguing that he is an ally to struggling Americans and merely “dangerous” to a list of corporate and political interests he claimed are “rigging our policies against us.” The NRSC ad and Scott’s remark on CNN didn’t acknowledge that the “dangerous” identifier was directed at specific targets, nor that El-Sayed was rejecting the notion that he is broadly “dangerous” to Americans.

Here’s the full context.

El-Sayed said his critics “always use this word around me: dangerous,” then added sarcastically, to some audience laughter, “I always wonder, like, why would you call someone like me dangerous? It’s not like people who look like me have ever been called dangerous. It’s not like you’re falling into a well-worn groove that’s been around for 25 years calling people who look like me with names like mine dangerous. I know that’s not what you’re doing, right?”

He continued: “I’ll just say this. Go ask a child who needed a pair of glasses in Detroit if I’m dangerous. Go ask the folks who could not breathe because of smokestacks spewing out sulfur dioxide if I’m dangerous. Go ask the parents of kids who are going to schools that were leaded if I’m dangerous. Go ask the people flooded in medical debt if I’m dangerous. I think what they’ll tell you is: He’s the best friend you might have if you want government to work for you. I’ll tell you what: If you’re AIPAC, I’m pretty damn dangerous. If you’re Big Pharma, I’m dangerous. If you’re Big Tech and want to put a data center in your backyard, I’m dangerous. If you’re a big bank that wants to collude against us, I am dangerous. If you’re a monopolist who wants to raise our prices, I’m dangerous. If you’re Chuck Schumer, I’m pretty damn dangerous. And I think it’s about damn time we had Democrats who are willing to be dangerous for all the people rigging our policies against us.”

Even the RNC previously provided significantly more context

In a social media post on the day of El-Sayed’s speech, the Republican National Committee posted a 15-second clip of El-Sayed saying: “If you’re a big bank that wants to collude against us, I am dangerous. If you’re a monopolist who wants to raise our prices, I’m dangerous. If you’re Chuck Schumer, I’m pretty damn dangerous.”

That’s not El-Sayed’s entire monologue, of course, but it’s a fair edit – clearly demonstrating that El-Sayed was not generally admitting he’s a “dangerous” man but rather identifying himself as “dangerous” to big businesses supposedly hurting the public and to Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader the party’s left has long criticized.

The NRSC, meanwhile, posted a clip that day showing El-Sayed saying: “If you’re Chuck Schumer, I’m pretty damn dangerous.” Even that four-second clip was fairer than the one-second, zero-context version of the “dangerous” quote the NRSC used in the ad.

Asked by CNN this week whether the ad did not take El-Sayed’s “dangerous” comment significantly out of context, NRSC spokesperson Joanna Rodriguez said in an email, “As you mentioned, yes, Abdul El-Sayed did in fact say he was dangerous.” Rodriguez went on to list some El-Sayed remarks she argued were examples of dangerous campaign rhetoric from him and to repeat the attacks from the 30-second ad.

Republicans are entitled to argue that El-Sayed is dangerous and has said dangerous things. But Scott purported to be quoting El-Sayed’s own words, and he didn’t fairly convey those words. The ad didn’t either.

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Millions of Americans with untreated high blood pressure should be taking medication

By CNN
Nearly 1 in 3 adults in the United States with untreated high blood pressure would benefit from treatment and are not getting it, according to a new study.That’s because nearly 10 million Americans now meet newly updated guidelines by the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology that redefine an adult’s risk for cardiovascular disease.“We estimated that approximately 200,900 all-cause deaths and 162,600 cardiovascular deaths could be prevented over the next 10 years,” said lead study author Dr. Mustafa Al-Jarshawi, a cardiologist at Keele University in England.Ideally, doctors want blood pressure to fall below 120 mmHg systolic and 80 mmHg diastolic. If blood pressure is around 130/80, doctors have typically advised people to make changes to their lifestyle, such as increasing exercise.If doctors use the American Heart Association’s new PREVENT tool, which considers blood sugar, kidney function and a person’s decade-long risk for heart disease as well as blood pressure, some 81 million Americans would be eligible for blood pressure medications.“What this is saying is that people who have traditionally not been at very high risk are now eligible to be treated with medications more aggressively,” said cardiologist Dr. Andrew Freeman, director of cardiovascular prevention and wellness at National Jewish Health in Denver.“Generally, I think when people have additional risk, blood pressure is really the silent killer,” said Freeman, who was not involved with the study.Expanding treatment could save livesThe study, published July 29 in the Journal of the American Heart Association, analyzed National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data from 2009 to 2018. Newer data is available, but the most up-to-date version of the survey hasn’t been around long enough for researchers to know participants’ cause and time of death.The study examines how death rates might be lower if the 2025 hypertension guidelines were implemented during those years, Al-Jarshawi said.Among 81 million adults with high blood pressure and no cardiovascular disease, nearly 23 million may be newly eligible under the new guidelines. Of those 23 million, 9.7 million were untreated.Becoming eligible to receive blood pressure medication was associated with a 23% lower risk of dying compared with no treatment. When it comes to the chances of dying from a heart-related issue, risk dropped by 50%. The study also found that adults with diabetes would benefit most from treatment. This is because diabetes and high blood pressure often occur together, significantly increasing cardiovascular risk, Al-Jarshawi said.Treatment is more than a medicationAny eligible person shouldn’t hesitate to start taking medication in addition to making lifestyle changes to reduce long-term risks, Al-Jarshawi said.Controlling high blood pressure is a long-term commitment to health, CNN contributor Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and adjunct associate professor at George Washington University, told CNN in a previous article. She recommended looking into a key inventory of five daily habits: level of physical activity, diet, substance use including alcohol and marijuana, stress levels, and a healthy weight.“You don’t have to do everything perfectly to make a difference in your health,” Wen said. She suggests starting with small lifestyle changes. Many people can’t easily reduce stress in their lives, but maybe they can more easily start eating more fruits and vegetables.”The findings of the new study highlight the importance of controlling high blood pressure, Freeman said.“The western world is ailing from a variety of cardiometabolic, kidney diseases,” Freeman said. “High blood pressure amplifies a lot of risk, and we have to do whatever we can to get that risk down and being aggressive about blood pressure is very low-hanging fruit.”However, medication only works when it’s inside the person, and not sitting in the bottle unused, Freeman said. About half of adults in the US with high blood pressure don’t regularly take their prescribed medication, according to a July 2025 study published in the journal JAMA Cardiology.Freeman recommends trying to form a habit, such as keeping your pillbox next to an alarm or toothbrush. That way, when set an alarm for the morning or brush your teeth, you remember to also take the pills.“There’s a way to cue yourself and remind,” Freeman said. “For those people that forget, consider having a small supply in your purse or your wallet or your car, just so you can always remember to take it.”The study’s findings also highlight the need for physicians to be alert to early signs of disease and consider blood pressure treatment, even in younger people, according to Freeman.“We’re seeing a lot more young people now who have chronic disease and diabetes and other things that may be relatively mild, but still at risk, and we need to be even more aggressive,” Freeman said.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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