DALLAS — Michigan Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers told The Post that his Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, is “anti-American” due to his past rhetoric about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“He has long separated himself from Team America,” Rogers said Thursday as he prepared to address the second and final night of the GOP’s midterm convention. “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].
“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,” added Rogers one day before the 25th anniversary of the attacks that killed 2,977 people at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pa.
El-Sayed has been criticized after remarking in a resurfaced September 2021 episode of his podcast, “America Dissected,” that “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,” the future Senate candidate added.
Days later, as Americans marked the 20th anniversary of the atrocity, El-Sayed posted on X, then known as Twitter: “Today, I mourn the 3K lives, 6K injuries, & infrastructural devastation in NYC, perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my faith.”
The later-deleted post continued: “Tomorrow, I’ll mourn ~1M lives, millions of injuries, & infrastructural devastation in 3 countries, perpetrated ignorantly in the name of my country.”
“What is deeply anti-American is voting against healthcare funding for 9/11 first responders—which Mike Rogers did twice while in Congress,” El-Sayed’s communications director Roxie Richner told The Post in response.
“He told a 9/11 first responder—who had part of his foot amputated because of an injury sustained at Ground Zero—that his healthcare was a ‘New York problem,’” she added. “Mike Rogers is resorting to bad-faith lies of Abdul to distract from his decades-long career of extremism.”
Rogers, then a House member, had objected in 2010 to Congress establishing the World Trade Center Health Program as a mandatory initiative— meaning it would be automatically funded without lawmakers conducting the type of oversight typically done prior to doling out money.
Instead, he pushed unsuccessfully for a $150 million appropriation for 9/11 first responders who suffered health complications.
The World Trade Center Health Program began operation in 2011 and is currently authorized through 2090.
Republicans have also made an issue of El-Sayed campaigning with Mao-loving far-left streamer Hasan Piker, who said in 2019 that America “deserved” 9/11, before attempting to walk back that remark.
Despite his supposed reversal, Piker has displayed a framed copy of the New York Times front page of Sept. 12, 2001, prominently in his streaming studio.
“Abdul El Sayed has chosen Hasan as his running mate,” Rogers said in his convention address. “Together, they attack America. They excuse extremism. They treat our country like it’s the villain.”
“He’s a con man. I’m a lawman,” the Republican declared. “He wants to represent Palestine. I want to represent Michigan.”
