Rogers uses RNC midterm platform to attack El-Sayed as Dems push back against Islamophobic rhetoric

Michigan Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers used his national convention speech to link Democratic opponent Abdul El-Sayed to Islamic terrorism and Sept. 11, invoking El-Sayed's association with streamer Hasan Piker, who has said America deserved the attacks. El-Sayed's campaign says Piker doesn't speak for it, though El-Sayed has not directly denounced him.

Rogers also amplified claims that El-Sayed's campaign has taken money tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, an allegation with no supporting evidence and one that traces back to a debunked 2018 conspiracy from former state senator Patrick Colbeck. A parallel line of attack, pushed by the National Republican Senatorial Committee via a conservative outlet, ties El-Sayed to his biological mother's decades-old work for a group later designated as terror-supporting; Snopes found the claim misleading rather than true.

The NRSC's regional press secretary defended using El-Sayed's mother's history as fair game. Candidates for U.S. Senate run alone, without running mates, a detail that undercuts Rogers' repeated framing of Piker as El-Sayed's political partner.

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