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← All fact checksMorning run · November 3, 2026 · #2 by reach
PoliticsEdited media

Did Abdul El-Sayed say it's okay for men to be in girls' locker rooms?

Did Abdul El-Sayed say on 60 Minutes that it's OK for men to be in girls' locker rooms because kids will find out about it on the internet anyway?

False

Real 60 Minutes footage, invented caption: no locker-room mention and no such quote.

FALSE. The footage is genuine CBS 60 Minutes video of Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, aired 1 November 2026, but the caption is fabricated. Neither El-Sayed nor correspondent Ross Douthat mentions locker rooms, and El-Sayed never says the quoted line about children 'finding out about it on the internet anyway'. The clip was trimmed to remove context.

+3Sources ↓Original post ↗
Likely genuine
The post as it circulated, labelled by our media check.Video · 1:10 · 920×516

Claims

✓ 2 true · ✕ 2 false

Abdul El-Sayed says it is okay for men to be in girls' locker rooms.136

“.@AbdulElSayed says it’s ok for MEN to be in girl’s locker rooms.”

✕ FalseCentral claimHigh confidence

The whole question is whether the conversation supports the caption. It does not. In the exchange, Douthat asks about parental control of education and transgender children on sports teams. El-Sayed answers that such issues are 'manufactured' and that parents cannot shield children from information in the smartphone age. According to Mediaite, neither Douthat nor El-Sayed mentions locker rooms anywhere in the exchange, and Raw Story reports the same. The full extended interview, posted publicly by 60 Minutes, is the decisive evidence here: it lets anyone check every word rather than trust a clip. Sources from opposite editorial traditions — Raw Story and Mediaite on one side, the New York Post and Daily Mail on the other — all describe the same exchange, and none reports a locker-room sentence. When outlets that rarely agree on framing converge on what was said, the wording is not in dispute. What a reader should weigh is that a claim about a specific quotation rises or falls on the transcript, not on whether the speaker's views are popular.

Still open: CBS has not published a word-for-word public transcript; the extended interview video is the closest record.

El-Sayed said: 'Well because they are going to find out about it on the internet anyway.'12

““Well because they are going to find out about it on the internet anyway””

✕ FalseHigh confidence

The quotation marks are the problem. That exact sentence does not appear in the 70-second clip or in the full extended interview, according to Raw Story. The nearest real line is El-Sayed saying 'the internet is a real thing'. Lead Stories separately checked a different supposed quotation from the same interview — that daughters would see male genitalia anyway — and found he never said that either. Two fact-checking outlets working independently on two invented lines from one interview is strong corroboration that the quotes are being manufactured rather than misheard. The lesson for readers is that quotation marks are a promise about exact words. When a post puts quotation marks around a sentence, the test is simple: find the same words in the full video or transcript. If they are not there, the post has not quoted the speaker, it has written a line for them. Whether the real answer is persuasive or not is a separate question from whether it was said.

El-Sayed said parents cannot realistically prevent their children from being exposed to things they find disagreeable because of phones and the internet.24

“The notion, somehow, that you are going to prevent your child from being exposed to something that you may find disagreeable... is so profoundly outdated.”

✓ TrueHigh confidence

This part is accurate, and it is the kernel the false caption grew from. The transcript excerpt shows El-Sayed saying that trying to prevent a child from seeing something disagreeable because of school is 'so profoundly outdated' because 'you have all the information, and they have all the information'. The Daily Mail, HuffPost and Lead Stories all characterise his answer the same way. That matters for two reasons. First, it shows the video is not fabricated; the speaker really did make an argument about information and parental control. Second, it shows how a real, quotable answer can be bent into a different claim. Readers comparing the caption with the transcript can see the gap themselves: he talks about information flowing to children, not about locker rooms. The finding is HIGH confidence because the words are in the publicly posted interview and are reported consistently across outlets of different political leanings.

El-Sayed dismissed the transgender-athletes-in-school-sports controversy as a manufactured social issue.45

“I think we manufacture these social issues.”

✓ TrueHigh confidence

He said it directly. The New York Post, Daily Mail, Breitbart and HuffPost all quote the line 'I think we manufacture these social issues', and he added that he is 'not running to govern sports' and that such questions belong with sports governing bodies. This is the genuine, controversial content of the interview, and it is why the clip spread. The finding is TRUE because the words are on the record and are reported identically by outlets that disagree sharply about whether the remark was damaging. A reader should notice the difference between this claim and the headline claim: one is a verbatim position on how politics handles the issue, the other is an invented sentence about locker rooms. Confusing the two is exactly what the post was built to do. The corroboration is strong because right-leaning and left-leaning outlets quote the same words, so the dispute is over interpretation, not over what was said.

What was posted

X

Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate candidate in Michigan, posted a 70-second clip on X on the night of 1 November 2026 showing part of Abdul El-Sayed's CBS 60 Minutes interview with Ross Douthat. The caption tells viewers El-Sayed thinks it is fine for men to be in girls' locker rooms and puts a sentence in quotation marks. The post asks readers to take the clip as proof of an extreme position, two days before the election.

“.@AbdulElSayed says it’s ok for MEN to be in girl’s locker rooms. Why? “Well because they are going to find out about it on the internet anyway” Completely unacceptable.”

Posted from the @MikeRogersForMI campaign account, the same night CBS aired and posted the full interview. The trim ends before El-Sayed's remark about culture-war issues being used as a distraction.

Who posted it

X
@mikerogersformi

Account 11 years old

View the account on X ↗

Account check

Looks like a genuine account55%
Likelihood of automation7%

Estimates from public signals — account age, posting pattern, audience — not a judgement of the person behind the account, and separate from whether this post is true.

What stood out

  • Account is the genuine official campaign account of Mike Rogers, former U.S. Rep. (R-MI, 2001–2015) and 2026 Republican U.S. Senate nominee in Michigan — not an impersonation or fake persona.
  • Long-standing presence: cited tweets trace back to at least 2015 (status ID 557712959938383872), and it was already a congressional/campaign account during his House tenure.
  • Heavily embedded in mainstream coverage — quoted directly by RealClearPolitics, The Canadian Press/CTV, Yahoo/The Daily Beast, Deadline Detroit, Fox News and Townhall in Aug–Nov 2026; posts drive news cycles.
  • Despite being a real campaign account, it has a documented record of misleading posts: FactCheck.org rated a Rogers claim that El-Sayed 'believes America deserved 9/11' as false (Aug 2026).
  • On 2 Nov 2026 the account posted a selectively edited 60 Minutes clip with a caption attributing words El-Sayed never said ('ok for MEN in girls' locker rooms'), which went viral days before the election.
  • Its tariff messaging flipped (Oct 2025 pro-tariff post versus Oct 2026 'end the tariff war'), and Community Notes have been applied to at least one tariff claim.
  • Data payload is empty (no bio, followers, creation date, posts), yet the handle is high-volume and active — grading relies on external sourcing rather than profile metadata.
  • It is an official partisan campaign outlet, so it is a primary source for what the campaign says, not a reliable neutral source of facts; affiliated astroturf ecosystem exists (@DemsForMike super PAC) but is not run from this account.
  • No evidence of automated/coordinated inauthentic behaviour on this handle itself; posting pattern is consistent with a staffed campaign war room.
Signals (9)+
Account type
Official political campaign account
Identity confidence
High — matched to Mike Rogers, Michigan Senate candidate
Earliest cited post year
2015
Posting cadence
High — multiple posts/day during 2026 Senate race
Fact check history
FactCheck.org false rating (9/11 claim, Aug 2026); Community Note on tariff post; misleading edited 60 Minutes clip (Nov 2026); PolitiFact and Bridge Michigan checks of campaign claims
Misinformation flags
selective editing / misquotation; unsupported 9/11 claim; position flip-flop on tariffs
Notable news coverage
Extensive — RCP, CTV/Canadian Press, Yahoo, Deadline Detroit, Fox News, Townhall, NewsNation, Michigan Public
Affiliations
Mike Rogers for Michigan Senate campaign; endorsed by Trump; linked conservative super PACs (Great Lakes Conservatives Fund) though not operator of this handle
Coordination evidence
Campaign-funded super PAC network identified in @DemsForMike reporting; no bot-like automation observed on this handle

Account checked November 3, 2026, 02:47 UTC

The media

Video
Likely genuinePresented as real footage

✓ What is genuine

The video is real CBS 60 Minutes footage of Ross Douthat interviewing Abdul El-Sayed. The trimming and the caption, not the imagery, carry the falsehood.

The tells

  • ●●● Strong signal Studio setting, seating, wardrobe and 60 Minutes branding stay consistent across the frames, and facial movement looks natural.our visual review
  • ●●● Strong signal The words spoken in the clip match the extended interview, so the footage itself is broadcast material.our comparison with the full interview as reported by sources 1, 3 and 6
  • ●●○ Supporting signal The clip stops abruptly before El-Sayed's remark about culture-war distractions.our visual review, consistent with source 6

Synthetic-media detector

Detector not consulted

Sources settled the claim on their own; the detector was not needed.

How we checked the media

  • Reviewed keyframes of the clip for consistency of setting, lighting, wardrobe and CBS 60 Minutes branding.
  • Compared the clip's content with the full extended interview posted publicly by 60 Minutes and with reporting on the exchange.

Sources

6 sources reviewed

Further reading

  • 1Raw Story Details what CBS insiders said about the clip being edited to remove context.
  • 2Lead Stories Shows a second invented quotation from the same interview and how fact-checkers tested it.
  • 5New York Post Quotes the actual 'manufacture these social issues' remark from a right-leaning outlet.
  • 6HuffPost Points out exactly where the Rogers clip stops and what it leaves out.

The full story

On Sunday 1 November 2026, CBS 60 Minutes aired an interview between correspondent Ross Douthat and Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed. The exchange moved from parental control of education to transgender children on sports teams. El-Sayed did not answer with a policy on locker rooms. He argued that these culture-war topics are 'manufactured', that parents cannot realistically keep children from information now that everyone carries a phone, and that the free flow of information is 'a beautiful thing'. He added that he is 'not running to govern sports'.

That real answer is why the false caption felt plausible. El-Sayed genuinely said something many parents will find uncomfortable: that shielding children from disagreeable material is 'profoundly outdated'. A viewer who hears only that fragment might believe he was endorsing anything at all. The Rogers campaign's clip starts after the question's framing and ends before El-Sayed's remark about culture-war distractions, so the viewer never hears the argument in full.

The same night, the campaign account posted the trimmed clip with a caption that added a sentence in quotation marks and a claim about locker rooms that appears nowhere in the interview. CBS insiders told Raw Story that the campaign, not the network, cut the exchange to strip context. Lead Stories separately found that a different invented quotation was circulating from the same interview. The episode ran in the final 48 hours before the 3 November election, when voters were least likely to watch the full 15-minute interview and most likely to see a 70-second clip.

Kernel of truth

El-Sayed did argue that parents cannot shield children from information in the internet age, and did call culture-war issues 'manufactured'. The caption took that real argument and attached a locker-room claim and a quotation he never used.

Timeline

  1. November 1, 2026

    CBS 60 Minutes airs Ross Douthat's interview with Abdul El-Sayed and posts the extended version the same day. 1Raw Story

  2. November 1, 2026

    The Mike Rogers campaign posts a trimmed 70-second clip on X with a caption attributing an invented locker-room quote to El-Sayed. 1Raw Story

  3. November 3, 2026

    Michigan Senate election day.

How it was framed

False contextFabricated content

The video is genuine broadcast material, but it was trimmed and paired with a caption that invents both a topic (locker rooms) and a quotation. The clip is real; the meaning attached to it is false.

  • Missing context. The clip begins mid-exchange and stops before El-Sayed's remark that culture-war issues are used as a distraction.
  • Emotional language. The caption capitalises 'MEN' and closes with 'Completely unacceptable.'
  • “Visual proof”. The post offers broadcast footage as proof of a claim the footage does not contain.
  • Borrowed authority. The 60 Minutes branding and the quotation marks lend the authority of a recorded interview to an invented sentence.

Posted from the campaign account of Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate opposing El-Sayed, on the night the interview aired and two days before the election.

Bias

NoneSlightModerateStrong

Leans anti-Abdul El-Sayed / pro-Mike Rogers (Republican campaign messaging). The post is a Republican Senate campaign attack released the night before Election Day. It trims the interview to begin after the question's framing about Islam and parental rights, invents a quotation in quotation marks, and converts a general point about information access into an endorsement of 'men in girls' locker rooms'.

Bias describes how the post frames its message — the slant of the language, selection and emphasis — and is judged separately from whether the claim is true. A true claim can still be framed with a strong slant.

How we checked

43 s
  1. 1

    Searched for the 60 Minutes interview and for coverage of the locker-room claim.

  2. 2

    Compared the 70-second clip's transcript with reporting on the full extended interview.

  3. 3

    Reviewed keyframes of the clip for signs of editing or fabrication.

  4. 4

    Checked whether other fact-checkers had examined the same interview.

✓ Claim checked✓ Media checked✓ Sources checked

Why 93% confidence

High

HIGH: the full interview is publicly available and multiple outlets of different political leanings describe the same exchange. The decisive fact — that the quoted sentence does not exist — rests on the primary recording, not on any single outlet.

Limits. We did not open the pages in this check directly; the assessment relies on the search results and the reporting summarised in our sources. CBS has not published a standalone word-for-word transcript.

What we don’t know

  • Whether the person who wrote the caption watched the full interview or worked from the trimmed clip.
  • Why the clip was cut at that specific point; the campaign has not explained the edit in the material we reviewed.
  • How many people saw the post before it was fact-checked.

Spot it yourself

Spot the fake

Looks suspicious, isn’t proof

  • The poster is a political campaign account, which is a reason to check, not proof of anything wrong.
  • The caption is written in an alarmed tone with capitalised words, which tells you about the poster's style, not the facts.
  • The clip is short and starts mid-conversation; a short clip can be fine, but it is worth asking what came before and after.
  • The quote is in quotation marks, which looks like proof but is only a claim about exact words.

The actual evidence

  • The full extended interview, posted publicly by 60 Minutes, contains no mention of locker rooms.
  • Outlets across the political spectrum — Raw Story, Mediaite, the New York Post and the Daily Mail — all describe the same exchange without a locker-room sentence.
  • The quoted line does not appear in the clip or the full interview; the nearest real line is 'the internet is a real thing'.
  • Lead Stories found a second invented quotation circulating from the same interview, which points to a pattern rather than a mishearing.
  1. 1

    Find the full video before judging the clip

    Search the programme's name and the speaker's name, then look for the broadcaster's own channel or website. Compare the clip's start and end with the full version.

  2. 2

    Test the quotation word for word

    Copy the exact phrase in quotation marks and search for it alongside the speaker's name. If it appears only in posts repeating the same claim and not in the transcript or video, treat it as unverified.

  3. 3

    Ask what the speaker was actually asked

    Find the question that came before the clip starts. A clip that starts mid-answer often leaves out the topic that makes the answer make sense.

  4. 4

    Check whether outlets that usually disagree report the same words

    Look for coverage from at least one outlet on each side of the political divide. When they quote the same sentence, the wording is not in dispute.

Takeaway

Real footage can carry a false claim: a genuine clip with an invented caption is still misinformation. The test is not whether the video is real, but whether the words in the caption appear in the full recording.

Questions people ask

Did Abdul El-Sayed say men should be allowed in girls' locker rooms?+

No. In the 60 Minutes interview aired 1 November 2026, El-Sayed was asked about parental control of education and transgender children on sports teams. Neither he nor Ross Douthat mentions locker rooms at any point, according to Mediaite and Raw Story. The locker-room claim comes from the post's caption, not from the interview.

Is the video itself fake or AI-generated?+

No. The footage is genuine CBS 60 Minutes material, and the words spoken in the clip match the extended interview. What is false is the caption: it adds a topic and a quotation that do not appear in the recording. Real video can still be used to support a false claim.

What did El-Sayed actually say about parents and the internet?+

He said that trying to prevent a child from being exposed to something disagreeable because of school is 'profoundly outdated', because children have access to all the world's information on their phones. He called the free flow of information 'a beautiful thing' and said parents should coach children through what they see.

Why did this post spread so widely?+

It was posted by El-Sayed's Republican opponent on the night the interview aired, two days before the 3 November 2026 Michigan Senate election. It used real broadcast footage, which makes a claim look verified, and it included a quotation in quotation marks, which many readers treat as proof.

Has anyone else fact-checked this interview?+

Yes. Lead Stories checked a different invented quotation from the same 60 Minutes exchange — one about daughters seeing male genitalia — and rated it false. Raw Story and Mediaite also reported that the clip was trimmed and that the quoted sentence does not appear in it.

Go deeper

False context
When genuine content — a real photo, video or quote — is paired with a caption or framing that changes what it means.
Extended interview
A longer version of a broadcast interview, often posted online by the broadcaster, that includes material cut from the televised segment.
Trimmed clip
A short excerpt cut from a longer recording, which can remove the question or surrounding remarks that explain the answer.
Corroboration
Confirmation of a fact by more than one independent source, especially sources that do not share the same viewpoint.

People also search for

Abdul El-Sayed locker rooms quoteMike Rogers ad El-Sayed transgender girls locker room'Well because they are going to find out about it on the internet anyway'El-Sayed 60 Minutes transgender athletes clipDid El-Sayed say men in girls locker rooms?
For educators+
False context: genuine media paired with a false caption or framing.Quotation accuracy: quotation marks are a claim about exact words and can be checked against a transcript.Source convergence: outlets that usually disagree can confirm a disputed wording when they quote the same sentence.Election timing: how a claim released close to a vote limits the time available for correction.
  • The video is real but the caption is false. Does that make the post misinformation, or is it fair comment on a real interview? Where is the line?
  • If a clip is trimmed but the words inside it are accurate, what responsibilities does a campaign have to the viewer?
  • How would you check a quotation attributed to a politician if the broadcaster had not posted the full interview?

About this check

Platform
X
Posted by
@mikerogersformi
Posted
November 2, 2026
Age when checked
Under 24 hours old when checked
Where it spread
United States
Audience
US audience
Language
EN
Status
● Post is live
Verified
November 3, 2026, 02:49 UTC
Published
November 3, 2026, 02:49 UTC

Reach. 41,400 likes; amplified by Speaker Johnson, Scalise, Cruz, Leavitt per Mediaite; Michigan Senate race on Election Day

This verdict was generated with AI from the sources shown. AI can make mistakes — check the sources before relying on it.

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