LIfe Imitates Art: the El-Sayed Town Hall

By Don Varyu, October 23, 2026

Aaron Sorkin is widely recognized as the greatest dialogue writer of his generation. His words helped establish or embellish the fame of Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson (A Few Good Men), Martin Sheen, Allison Janney and Rob Lowe (West Wing), Brad Pitt (Moneyball), and Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake, and Dakota Johnson (The Social Network).

But perhaps Sorkin’s most electrifying and memorable scene was written for the pilot episode of a lesser-known HBO series, Newsroom. The setting puts TV anchor Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) on a stage answering questions from an audience of college students…

Everyone who saw it found it stunning, and/or offensive. Some said he was entirely too harsh to a young woman. Others said it was a penetrating indictment of the “America First” sentiment of American politics. (It was written 16 years ago but somehow seems even more relevant today).

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Relevance is particularly striking right now because the same scene has played out again—in real life. A Q&A session between U.S. senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed and a young questioner took place at a smaller gathering in Michigan. But the impact there was was even more powerful because it was real--no script required.

However, it did turn out that one side of this faceoff was a fiction. Tomy was later identified as Tom Teepell, son of a man a consulting group that was being paid a quarter of a million dollars to “influence” the election on behalf of El-Sayed’s opponent. Tommy Teepell was paid by his dad’s company to play a role at that event…as were several other young people also dogging El-Sayed’s campaign events.

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There are clear precedents to this moment. Two in particular also featured racial premises:

· In 1992, Bill Clinton condemned singer Sister Soulja in the aftermath of the violent Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. Soulja had said that since black people (in her words) killed each other every day, they “should have a week to kill white people.” Clinton said those words matched the verbal attacks of KKK leader David Duke…which put an end to that controversy.

· In 2008, during a shared town hall, a woman told presidential candidate John McCain that she didn’t like his opponent, Barack Obama, because he was “an Arab”. McCain immediately cut her off, shaking his head, and said, “no, he’s a decent family man (and) citizen.” In both cases, racial attacks evaporated.

El-Sayed is not running for president, but his ad lib performance was beyond “presidential.” It was fully Sorkin-esk.

Which leads to a closing thought.

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In my mind, Donald Trump’s greatest asset in first getting to the White House was the projection of strength. For many voters, no context was required. A subset of Republican (and independent) voters looked past political issues, searching for someone they thought was strong enough to “look out” for them.

El-Sayed has the same demonstrated skill.

Except--in his case--no script required.

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