The Michigan Senate election is one of the most interesting of the 2026 midterms because, unlike other Republican Senate candidates, Mike Rogers was a personal Trump pick, and he can’t run away from the president.
Rogers has to keep himself aligned with Trump while downplaying the president in a state where Trump is extremely unpopular.
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The Rogers campaign decided that their answer was to try to turn the election into a referendum on his Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed. Rogers has spent the campaign suggesting and implying that El-Sayed is aligned with and supports extremist Muslim terrorism.
Trump has called El-Sayed a jihadist.
Rogers is trying to lay low and keep the focus on his attacks on El-Sayed, but when Rogers went on CNN’s State Of The Union on Sunday morning, that plan was blown to bits.
Dana Bash played a clip of Trump calling El-Sayed a jihadist, and asked Rogers, “You're a former special agent with the FBI, former intelligence chair in the House. Are you comfortable with that?”
Rogers answered, “ Listen, I, I've never called him the terrorist. Uh, I wore the uniform of the United States of America, so people can pray any way they want. That is not the issue here. What has become the issue is his relationship and his family relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is banned in five Muslim countries. I, you know, he wants to play the victim. This is not about that. This is about the way you think, not the way you pray. This is about your ideology and how dangerous it is. I mean, he has a long history of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which by the way, uh, diminishes women's role in society just as they did when they took over in Egypt in 2012 and 2013. Congressman- He supported that regime...”