In a combative interview with NBC News’ Tom Llamas on Wednesday, Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed dismissed his half-sister’s past comments about his family’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood as “hearsay.”

El-Sayed had, in a previous NBC interview, denied that his family has any ties to the Muslim Brotherhood after ignoring attacks from his GOP opponent Mike Rogers on the subject at a debate last week. But newly resurfaced tweets by his half-sister — largely written in 2012 and 2013 — drew those denials into question, as his sister had repeatedly said that family members of theirs had long been Muslim Brotherhood members, including their mother.

“You want to ask me about what was happening in Egypt in 1970. Are you serious?” El-Sayed said. “I have no ties. We have no ties. … I have never had these conversations with my mother. I wasn’t raised by my mother.”

He went on to accuse Llamas of “using hearsay evidence from a tweet” and called it “not serious.”

The Washington Free Beacon also resurfaced a now-deleted 2021 Substack article by El-Sayed in which he defended a friend — the son of a senior Muslim Brotherhood official — who was jailed in Egypt for funding the group.

In the same NBC interview, El-Sayed also doubled down on comments characterizing Israel as a threat to the United States on par with Iran, which many Jewish Democratic leaders in the state found shocking.

“When we look at our situation in the world, there is actively more war in the world because of what Israel is pushing us into,” he said. “I agree that Iran is a dangerous threat. That’s not a question, but I also think that when you ostensibly have an ally that’s pushing you into war with the country that is threatening you, that does not make you any safer.”

Asked in the same interview about Jewish Democrats planning to vote for Rogers, El-Sayed said, “It is important for us to understand that right now, we can either come together to save our democracy, or we can allow folks who want to rubber stamp the worst policies from Donald Trump and his agenda that is raising our prices for everything from gas to groceries, and the choice is ultimately ours.”

Shown a photograph of a lawn sign displayed by a Jewish Democrat planning to support Rogers with the slogan “Hurt people help people” — a twist on El-Sayed’s response, “hurt people hurt people,” to the Temple Israel terrorist attack — El-Sayed dismissed the sentiment as unrealistic but said the timing of his initial comments was misguided.

“I wish it was true that hurt people always help people. I’d love to live in that world. I want us to understand pain for what it is and end the cycle of violence that we see anywhere against anyone,” he said. “People really fixated on those four words, and I realized that it was not the right thing to have said at the time. And so I apologize for what I said.”