Abdul El-Sayed asked Fox News host Jesse Watters if he was circumcised during a heated on-air exchange about transgender medical care for minors.
The Michigan Democratic Senate candidate, 40, appeared on “Jesse Watters Primetime” Monday night and quickly turned the conversation graphic after Watters pressed him on sex change surgeries for children. El-Sayed, a former public health official, had been arguing that the government should not interfere in transgender medical procedures for minors when he pivoted to the personal interrogation.
“Do you really want to have this conversation? Are you circumcised?” El-Sayed bluntly asked Watters, 46, during the segment.
“Yeah, yeah, but I mean, that’s a personal question — doctor,” Watters responded on the Fox News program.
El-Sayed, seemingly convinced that he had ended the debate with his question, then suggested: “You probably should want to move on.”
“Circumcision is different than castration!” Watters fired back on the show.
Undeterred, El-Sayed pressed his comparison further. He argued that it was a “problem” that Watters believed the government should step in to outlaw sex change surgeries for minors while not taking the same position on circumcisions.
“I’m just saying that yes, circumcision is surgery on a kid’s ding-a-ling,” the former public health official told Watters. “So if you really want to bring that up, you can … I just think you guys are really selective about these things.”
Watters described El-Sayed’s position as “wacky” and “sick.”
“Abdul, Michigan’s not going for that. That is sick stuff,” he said on the program.
El-Sayed is running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters in Michigan. The former Detroit health commissioner and 2018 gubernatorial candidate has positioned himself as a progressive voice in the race, though Monday’s exchange marked an unusually confrontational turn in his media appearances.
Watters, who took over the 8 p.m. Fox News slot in 2023 after Tucker Carlson’s departure, has made cultural issues and what he frames as extreme Democratic positions a regular feature of his program. The circumcision exchange represented one of the more surreal moments in the show’s recent history, with both men talking over each other as the segment devolved.
The Michigan Senate race is expected to be one of the most competitive in the 2026 cycle, with Republicans targeting the seat in a state that Donald Trump carried in the 2024 presidential election. El-Sayed faces a Democratic primary field that includes at least one other prominent candidate, while Republicans have begun coalescing around their own contenders.
In the viral moment that circulated widely on social media following the broadcast, El-Sayed’s decision to ask about Watters’s own body appeared designed to deflect from direct engagement on the specifics of transgender medical care, instead attempting to catch the host in an alleged inconsistency on government involvement in childhood medical procedures. Watters rejected the equivalence outright, keeping the exchange focused on what he characterized as the more extreme nature of sex change interventions compared to circumcision.
The segment ended without resolution on the underlying policy dispute, with both men having talked past each other on the primetime cable program.
El-Sayed’s campaign has not scheduled additional Fox News appearances following the Monday night exchange.