Socialism has always been a rich man’s game. The politicians who preach it live well. The people who believe it don’t.
You’ve heard the speech a thousand times. Rail against the wealthy, promise to redistribute their riches, feed off envy and call it justice. The left has spent years turning “the 1%” into America’s favorite villain. If we could just tax them enough, they tell us, we’d fix everything. Free healthcare. Free college. It’s class warfare sold as compassion, and millions keep buying it.
But every so often, someone pulls back the curtain on the people leading the charge. And what you find — well, you can’t make this stuff up.
Meet Michigan’s newest one-percenter
His name is Abdul El-Sayed. He’s a Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Michigan, backed by Bernie Sanders on the very day he launched his campaign. El-Sayed has built his entire candidacy on attacking the wealthy, calling extreme wealth “an existential threat to our economy and our democracy.”
There’s just one problem. His recently released tax returns show he and his wife earned $686,069 in 2025. In Michigan, you crack the top 1% at about $611,500. The median household income in Detroit? Thirty-eight thousand dollars. El-Sayed makes roughly 18 times that.
From Fox News:
“For people who have accumulated so much wealth that your money makes money, at some point, we’re like, ‘well we can’t possibly tax them,'” El-Sayed said at an August 2025 campaign event. “If we put a tax on wealth it would return a lot of that money back into public use.”
Here’s the kicker: $262,299 of El-Sayed’s income came from capital gains — literally his money making money. You read that right. That’s 40% of his total income, more than double the national average. He also owns two rental properties worth up to $750,000 while attacking “greedy landlords.” Rules for thee, I suppose.
It gets worse
El-Sayed campaigns on “Medicare for All” — government-run healthcare from “cradle to grave.” But his wife runs a private psychiatry practice that doesn’t accept Medicare. Or Medicaid. Or any insurance at all. Cash only, out of pocket. As one Reddit user put it: “How do I make that much?” The reply: “Marry a psychiatrist that refuses to take Medicare.” I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Then there are the watches. The Washington Free Beacon found El-Sayed sporting a $10,000 Omega Speedmaster and a $4,000 Sinn diver’s watch on the campaign trail. But sure, tell me more about income inequality.
He also only released two pages of his tax return, conveniently omitting the schedules that would detail where all that money actually came from. So much for “government transparency.”
The pattern never changes
Look, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. El-Sayed isn’t an anomaly — he’s the rule. From the Soviet nomenklatura to Venezuelan strongmen to every champagne socialist in Washington, the people at the top of the socialist food chain always exempt themselves from the revolution they’re selling.
Socialism doesn’t lift people up. It pulls everyone down — everyone except the people running the system. It hasn’t worked in Cuba. It hasn’t worked in Venezuela. It hasn’t worked anywhere it’s ever been tried. And yet they keep pushing it, expecting different results. There’s a word for that.
The crusade against the 1% never seems to include the socialists who got there first. And the working families they claim to fight for? They’re the ones left holding the bag — while the good doctor checks his Omega and heads to the next rally.
Key Takeaways
- Bernie-backed Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s tax returns place him in the top 1% he campaigns against.
- El-Sayed earned $262K in capital gains while attacking people whose “money makes money.”
- His wife’s cash-only psychiatry practice rejects the very Medicare system he wants to impose on everyone else.
- Socialism always enriches its leaders while pulling down the working people it claims to protect.
