The September 11 Whataboutism of El-Sayed and Mamdani

A resurfaced, since-deleted September 11, 2021, tweet from Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is making the rounds. On that 20th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in American history, El-Sayed tweeted:

Today, I mourn the 3K lives, 6K injuries, & infrastructural devastation in NYC, perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my faith.

Tomorrow, I'll mourn ~1M lives, millions of injuries, & infrastructural devastation in 3 countries, perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my country.

That same day, Zohran Mamdani tweeted a strikingly similar message:

Nearly 3,000 New Yorkers died on 9/11; 20 years later, the death hasn't stopped. We mourn our neighbors who died that day. The hundreds of thousands who died in the wars that followed. The unknown millions injured & displaced. In their memory, we work toward a better world.

Mamdani tweeted virtually verbatim 9/11 anniversary messages in 2022, 2023, and 2024 before shifting his tune during the fall of his mayoral campaign.