The conversation at a Virginia hotel not far from Washington’s Reagan National Airport quickly grew heated as a group of influential Egyptians sought to convince a dozen Americans that the removal of elected president Mohammed Morsi in 2013 and his replacement by Field Marshal Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was a plus for Egypt’s political evolution and US interests.

Some members of the Egyptian delegation — invited to Washington by Hands Along the Nile Development Services, a group that promotes people-to-people ties with Egypt, and several US faith-based organizations — accused American think tank staff and human rights advocates of having a double standard for labeling the overthrow of Ukraine’s elected president this year as a “revolution” but Morsi’s ouster a “coup.

Riham el-Sahly, a television presenter on El Mehwar satellite channel, noted that Morsi had violated the constitution by claiming dictatorial powers in November 2012 and acquiesced in the brutal beating of demonstrators in front of the presidential palace. Crime rose during Morsi’s tenure and Egyptians were afraid to walk the streets or send their kids to school, she told Al-Monitor.

“He turned people against him,” she said.