Michigan Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers used the eve of the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks to publicly condemn his Democratic opponent Abdul El-Sayed's past comments equating post-9/11 U.S. military action with the terrorist atrocity itself, calling the rhetoric "anti-American."
Rogers delivered the broadside from the stage of the GOP midterm convention in Dallas and in an interview with the New York Post, pointing to a resurfaced September 2021 podcast episode and a since-deleted social media post in which El-Sayed mourned 9/11 victims one day and pledged to mourn casualties of American military campaigns the next. Rogers, a former House member, framed the contrast as disqualifying for anyone who wants to represent Michigan in the U.S. Senate.
El-Sayed's campaign fired back, accusing Rogers of "bad-faith lies" and noting that Rogers twice voted against healthcare funding for 9/11 first responders during his time in Congress.
The comments at the center of the clash come from two sources: a September 2021 episode of El-Sayed's podcast, "America Dissected," and a post he published on X, then Twitter, as Americans marked the 20th anniversary of the attacks that killed 2,977 people at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
On the podcast, El-Sayed said:
"9/11 scarred our country in profound ways, but what we did after 9/11 scarred millions of other people. When we talk about 9/11, we often fail to center them."
Days later, he posted a two-part message on X. The first half read: "Today, I mourn the 3K lives, 6K injuries, & infrastructural devastation in NYC, perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my faith." The second: "Tomorrow, I'll mourn ~1M lives, millions of injuries, & infrastructural devastation in 3 countries, perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my country." El-Sayed later deleted the post. No public explanation for the deletion appeared in reporting on the matter.
The framing is worth reading carefully. El-Sayed cast the September 11 attacks and the U.S. military response as parallel moral injuries, one "perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my faith," the other "perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my country." That construction places the murder of nearly 3,000 civilians by al-Qaeda terrorists on the same moral ledger as the American military campaigns that followed. Left-wing critics have previously attacked CBS News simply for reporting on those deleted posts.
Rogers did not hold back in his interview with the Post. He told the paper:
"He has long separated himself from Team America. His rhetoric is divisive. It's angry. It's anti-American. He'd have to have a full about-face for me to even take him serious[ly]."
On the convention stage in Dallas, Rogers widened the attack to include El-Sayed's association with Hasan Piker, a far-left online streamer who said in 2019 that America "deserved" 9/11. Piker later attempted to walk back that remark. He has displayed a framed copy of the New York Times front page from September 12, 2001, prominently in his streaming studio. Rogers told the convention crowd that El-Sayed had effectively made Piker his political partner.
"Abdul El Sayed has chosen Hasan as his running mate. Together, they attack America. They excuse extremism. They treat our country like it's the villain."
Rogers also drew a sharp personal contrast:
"He's a con man. I'm a lawman. He wants to represent Palestine. I want to represent Michigan."
And he challenged El-Sayed directly on where his loyalties lie:
"You need to decide if you're going to be for the United States and what we represent, or you're going to be for this ideology that has caused a lot of harm and death and destruction, not only here but around the world."
The pattern Rogers described, a candidate who treats America as co-equal offender with the terrorists who attacked it, who campaigns alongside a streamer who said the country "deserved" 9/11, and who deleted the evidence when it became politically inconvenient, is not a one-off gaffe. It reflects a broader strain within the Democratic Party's progressive wing, one that veteran strategist Donna Brazile has warned could define the party if mainstream Democrats don't push back.
Roxie Richner, El-Sayed's communications director, responded to the Post with a statement that tried to flip the 9/11 accountability question onto Rogers himself. She pointed to his congressional voting record:
"What is deeply anti-American is voting against healthcare funding for 9/11 first responders, which Mike Rogers did twice while in Congress."
Richner went further, alleging that Rogers once told a 9/11 first responder, a man who had part of his foot amputated because of an injury at Ground Zero, that his healthcare was a "New York problem." She called Rogers's attacks on El-Sayed "bad-faith lies" meant to "distract from his decades-long career of extremism."
The voting record, however, is more complicated than Richner's framing suggests. In 2010, Rogers objected to Congress establishing the World Trade Center Health Program, a federal program providing medical care to 9/11 responders and survivors, as a mandatory spending initiative. Mandatory programs are funded automatically, without the annual oversight and appropriations votes that lawmakers typically use to scrutinize how taxpayer money is spent. Rogers pushed instead for a $150 million appropriation for 9/11 first responders who suffered health complications, a proposal that would have kept the spending under regular congressional review. That effort failed, and the World Trade Center Health Program began operation in 2011. It is currently authorized through 2090.
Opposing the funding mechanism is not the same as opposing the care. Rogers wanted oversight of the money. That distinction matters, even if it is politically inconvenient for the El-Sayed campaign's counterattack.
The Hasan Piker connection adds a layer that El-Sayed's campaign did not address in its response to the Post. Piker's 2019 statement that America "deserved" 9/11 is not a matter of interpretation, it is a direct, public remark. His subsequent attempt to walk it back did not erase it. And El-Sayed has chosen to campaign alongside him.
Whether Piker holds any formal role in El-Sayed's campaign or is simply a high-profile surrogate remains unclear from available reporting. Rogers characterized the relationship as a de facto political partnership. El-Sayed's campaign did not dispute that characterization or explain the nature of the association.
El-Sayed's fundraising ties to CAIR-affiliated donors have already drawn scrutiny in this race. Campaigning with a streamer who said America deserved the worst terrorist attack in its history adds another data point to a pattern that Michigan voters will have to evaluate for themselves.
The broader question facing Democrats in Michigan, and nationally, is whether candidates who frame America as morally equivalent to its enemies can credibly claim to serve the country they seek to represent. It is the same tension visible when members of Congress introduce legislation that critics say prioritizes shielding illegal immigrants from law enforcement over protecting public safety.
Rogers, a former intelligence committee chairman, has warned before about the real-world consequences of reckless rhetoric from elected officials. On the eve of the 25th anniversary of September 11, he made clear he intends to make El-Sayed's words the centerpiece of the Michigan Senate race.
A candidate who deletes his own 9/11 post knows it was a problem. The question is whether Michigan voters will treat it as one.