Senator John Fetterman, D-Pa., branded Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdulrahman El-Sayed «Pontiac Platner» after the left-wing upstart called for the «ogre» to be put on a «pike» at a campaign event, in comments widely understood to reference the Pennsylvania lawmaker.

A recording from a Zoom call with donors obtained by Politico appeared to depict El-Sayed railing against those who have criticized his far-left policy platform, while singling out Fetterman and allegedly envisioning his head on a stake.

Fetterman later responded to CNBC’s Joe Kernen by blessing El-Sayed with a new nickname:

«I never worked out in male modeling, you know you could call me «Senator Shrek» — whatever — but this guy is really the Pontiac Platner, and now he’s really running to be, be the head of our emerging pro-Hamas wing here in the party,» Fetterman said of El-Sayed.

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Pontiac is a well-known name in Michigan, stemming from the 18th-century Odawa chief to his namesake city and the now-defunct General Motors brand that was discontinued following the 2008 financial crisis.

El-Sayed has routinely criticized the Israeli government, and some of his policy positions overlap with those of Maine oyster farmer Graham Platner, who dropped his Senate bid after a series of allegations of sexual misconduct involving women.

«Politically, some of the things that he said or done are unacceptable to me. I’m not really sure what I’ve really done or voted for that that has offended the little guy so much,» Fetterman went on.

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Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., left; Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, right. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images; Sarah Rice/Getty Images)

He added that Democrats are engaging in a «serious game» by allowing people in the «Bernie Sanders» wing of the party who «created the Platner disaster» some policy oxygen.

During El-Sayed’s Zoom call, the millennial left-winger spoke out specifically against Fetterman:

«In the interim need to be organizing downward and outward. So, a big pickup for us could be that John Fetterman seat [in Pennsylvania]. I’m like a lot of folks — they’re going to ‘F’ around and give me carte blanche to go take them out,» El-Sayed said.

«Y’all came at me so now I get to come at you and primary people like John Fetterman, and I have no problem with that — I’m looking forward to it.»

El-Sayed dismissed the longstanding custom against primarying sitting senators, a norm recently broken in the GOP when Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton defeated incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn in their primary.

«Then, what happens is, ideally, you put one ogre on a pike, and then everyone else gets the message, and all of a sudden starts to sound a lot different,» El-Sayed said.

The 6-foot-9 Fetterman took the insult in stride in his interview with Kernen, alluding to El-Sayed’s barb being his latest comparison to Mike Myers’ beloved green ogre that have cropped up in memes and elsewhere over the years.

«It’s incumbent on us, Republican and Democrat [alike], to police your own ranks. So that’s what I’m willing to do,» Fetterman said, adding that he is warning fellow lawmakers against eliminating the filibuster in one example.

El-Sayed and Platner also share several policy positions, including support for a single-payer, government-run Medicare-for-all system, anti-corporate housing policies, higher taxes on wealthy Americans and alignment with Sanders, a Vermont socialist.

While El-Sayed says he is neither a Democratic Socialists of America member nor a democratic socialist, he has a history of speaking at DSA events.

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Between 2017 and 2020, El-Sayed attended and spoke at six events held by the DSA, including a 2019 fundraiser which he headlined. Despite the longstanding relationship, El-Sayed has distanced himself from the DSA when interviewed by the press and outright rejected being labeled as a «socialist.»

«I’m not technically or practically DSA,» El-Sayed told the Wall Street Journal earlier this month. In an interview with CNN, he similarly stated that «I am not somebody who is a socialist. I believe in capitalism, I just believe that capitalism has to be regulated.»

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Fox News Digital reached out to Fetterman and El-Sayed for comment.

Fox News Digital’s Robert Schmad contributed to this report.

As multiple international crises grip the world, from Iran to Russia’s war in Ukraine, Sudan quietly remains one of the largest humanitarian and displacement disasters in the world.

Since the outbreak of hostilities in 2023, over 14 million people have been displaced and nearly 34 million people are in desperate need of humanitarian support, accounting for 10% of global needs, according to the International Rescue Committee.

«The war in Sudan has caused the world’s largest humanitarian crisis and has escalated into a regional war involving all of its neighbors as well as numerous Middle Eastern powers,» Alan Boswell, Project Director for the Horn of Africa at International Crisis Group, told Fox News Digital.

«Despite this, world leaders continue to ignore the conflict, leaving it to subordinates. That approach continues to fail,» Boswell added.

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The United Nations says that some 19.5 million people are experiencing acute hunger, and 4.5 million people have fled the country.

The U.S. also recently imposed an additional round of sanctions against the Sudanese Armed Forces for allegedly using chemical weapons in 2024 in violations of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

The Sudanese government denied the allegations.

The Trump administration has made significant efforts in trying to mediate between Russia and Ukraine, as well as bring Israel’s war against Gaza to an end. The administration is also trying to uphold a shaky ceasefire that was agreed with Iran to halt the war that began on February 28.

«For three years, we have warned that Sudan was on the brink of catastrophe, and those warnings have gone unanswered,» said International Rescue Committee Country Director Richard Data.

Sudan’s recent outbreak of civil war, following years of coups and credible accusations of ethnic cleansing and genocide, persists under the radar.

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Members of Sudanese Armed Popular Resistance Force take part in a military parade for fresh graduates, in Al-Qadarif state, in eastern Sudan on May 20, 2026.  (AFP via Getty Images)

The civil war broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, widely known as «Hemedti,» leader of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The two had been in an uneasy alliance ruling the country following the 2019 overthrow of Sudan’s longtime dictator, Omar al-Bashir, who had been in power since 1989. Together, the generals staged another coup in 2021, toppling the interim civilian government that had been in power after the fall of Bashir.

While both the Sudanese Armed Forces and RSF are accused of committing atrocities, recent reports have highlighted the brutality of the RSF.

A major focus of the deteriorating conditions has been in El-Obeid in North Kordofan state, where an escalating hunger crisis is plaguing over 100,000 displaced people in camps throughout the city.

«What we need to do is really now to plan for the scale-up beyond the 100,000 people that we have been supporting,» said World Food Programme Sudan Country Director, Abdallah Alwardat.

Members of the Sudanese army’s Special Mission Forces batallion in the Northern State hold a parade in Karima city on May 19, 2024. Sudan has been in the throes of conflict for over a year between the regular army led by de facto ruler Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the RSF led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.  (AFP via Getty Images)

El Fasher in the Darfur region is another major flashpoint, where the RSF took control in October 2025 and killed more than 6,000 people in the initial siege of the city.

A recent July report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights revealed widespread acts of sexual violence against women and girls, some as young as 12, including reports of mass and gang rapes committed by the RSF.

The RSF is also accused of abduction, with survivors describing incidents of girls and women being beaten, having their hands tied behind their backs, and being driven away in a Land cruiser.

Sudanese displaced people gather at the Zam Zam refugee camp outside the town of El-Fashir in the Darfour region of Sudan, during a visit by U.N. officials, on July 1, 2004. The U.N. humanitarian aid and refugee agencies appealed Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024, for $4.1 billion in international support for embattled civilians in Sudan amid signs that some may be dying of starvation after nearly a year of war there between the forces of rival generals. (AP Photo/Karel Prinsloo, File)

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The United Nations and other human rights groups have accused the RSF of perpetrating ethnically targeted attacks and concluded that at least three components of genocide have been overwhelmingly met, including deliberately inflicting conditions of life intended to destroy a group in whole or in part.

A U.N. report from September 2025 found that the Sudanese Armed Forces have also committed war crimes and attacked civilian populations and infrastructure. Both the Sudanese Armed Forces, and the RSF, targeted civilians with perceived affiliations to the enemy, with executions, torture and rape commonplace.

La vida política de Pavel Durov, fundador y propietario de Telegram, icono libertario, dio muchos tumbos en los últimos años. Cuando la Justicia francesa ordenó su detención y procesamiento en 2024, el caso se presentó como un debate sobre la libertad de expresión, la privacidad y la soberanía digital. En ese debate Durov era el libertario acosado por la censura y el control del Estado francés.

Rusia decidió este miércoles aumentar la presión sobre el servicio de mensajería Telegram, utilizado profusamente por jóvenes, empresarios y militares, al declarar en busca y captura a Dúrov, residente en el extranjero.

Pero el pasado de Durov tiene muchas más capas. Durante los últimos años hasta su procesamiento en Francia, Telegram fue derivando hasta convertirse en una herramienta al servicio de la estrategia europea del Kremlin, funcionando como correa de transmisión de cualquier partido político o grupúsculo que atacara a las democracias europeas y potenciara a las derechas más extremas.

La detención de Durov en Francia (fue procesado pero liberado en pocos días) produjo una alianza extraña. En su defensa salieron tanto opositores rusos, exiliados, enemigos de Putin, que lo veían como el icono libertario que había sido, hasta los propagandistas del Kremlin, en Europa y en Rusia, que venían su función actual como muy útil para sus intereses.

La propaganda rusa decía que Durov no era más que un descarriado, alguien que se había dejado engañar al creer que las democracias liberales occidentales eran mejores que el régimen ruso.

Para los libertarios, el Estado es el enemigo y Telegram una de sus últimas trincheras para defender la libertad frente a ese enemigo. Pero los hechos relacionados con Durov y Telegram muestran que ese cuento no es cierto.

Es cierto que Durov tuvo choques con las autoridades rusas hasta 2020. En 2018, por ejemplo, el Kremlin ordenó a sus telefónicas bloquear Telegram por negarse a entregar las claves que permitían desencriptar mensajes.

A partir de ahí algo empezó a cambiar. En 2020 esa prohibición se levantó sin causa aparente y la relación entre Durov y el Kremlin empezó a normalizarse. A partir de ahí Telegram fue el niño bueno del poder ruso. No sólo aceptó sus peticiones, sino que ese año empezó a colaborar activamente con la represión del Kremlin.

En 2021 Telegram bloqueó el bot de “voto inteligente” que había desarrollado el entorno de Alexei Navalny, el principal opositor que tuvo el presidente Vladimir Putin en la última década y que murió asesinado en una prisión rusa en febrero de 2024. Europa acusó a Putin de haber ordenado su asesinato.

Durov también cambió parte de su discurso en 2020. Desde ese año concentró sus críticas en Apple y Google, y dejó de hablar de la censura y la falta de democracia en Rusia. En una entrevista con el todavía muy trumpiano y a la vez propagandista ruso en Estados Unidos Tucker Carlson, insistió en esa línea. El Estado autoritario ruso ya no era su enemigo, sino las grandes plataformas estadounidenses.

A partir de la invasión rusa de Ucrania en febrero de 2022, mientras las grandes plataformas estadounidenses (Meta, Google) limitaban en lo posible la propaganda estatal rusa, Telegram mantuvo un sistema de moderación inútil y los agentes del Kremlin, en Rusia y fuera de Rusia, siguieron usando esa plataforma como correa de transmisión de su propaganda. La diplomacia europea considera que la plataforma tuvo usos militares a favor de Rusia y en contra de Ucrania. Además, Rusia ayudó a Telegram bloqueando otras redes en su territorio, como X.

El Durov que fue procesado en Francia aseguró que se trataba de “persecución política”, pero desde 2020 no es el libertario y rebelde antisistema que se vanagloria de ser, sino un actor importante de la estrategia de propaganda del Kremlin.

Además, desde entonces ayuda a la extrema derecha europea y ataca a los gobiernos que intentan poner orden en la ley de la selva que ha sido hasta hace poco la falta de regulación de la actividad de las plataformas.

Durov vuelve a los medios por una orden de detención rusa. Sólo falta saber si ha vuelto a cambiar y ahora se enfrenta al Kremlin.