El-Sayed reacts to resurfaced clip of Bill Clinton praising him when he was in college

Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed got emotional when he was played a resurfaced clip of Bill Clinton praising him when they shared a stage at a 2007 graduation ceremony.

The clip of the former president praising then-student valedictorian El-Sayed at the 2007 University of Michigan commencement ceremony went viral in the run-up to El-Sayed’s victory over Mike Rogers in Tuesday’s midterm elections, making him the first Muslim elected to the Senate.

After being shown the clip on MS Now on Thursday (November 5), an emotional El-Sayed, who faced a viciously Islamophobic campaign during which he was called a jihadist by President Trump, said, “ I'm grateful. It took a long time for me to see anything he saw in me simply because of my name, you know?”