The day after Michigan's primary, Mike Rogers put out a statement about the man he'll face in November.

"Never in a million years did I think that I would be running against someone who believes America deserved 9/11."

That's about Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Michigan's U.S. Senate seat. El-Sayed never said it. He said the opposite, on Fox News, on the record, months ago.

On August 7, PolitiFact rated Rogers' claim Pants on Fire — the worst rating they give. It's reserved for statements that are not just false but ridiculous.

Where the quote actually came from

The words "America deserved 9/11" belong to Hasan Piker, a Twitch streamer. He said them during a 2019 livestream. That was seven years ago, and Piker is not Abdul El-Sayed.

Piker walked it back two days later on "The Young Turks," saying he opposes violence and was arguing that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East "created the extremism that led to the terrorist attacks."

El-Sayed's connection is that he campaigned with Piker on April 7 of this year, at Michigan State and the University of Michigan.

Here's the part Rogers left out. On the morning of those events, El-Sayed went on "Fox & Friends." The host asked him directly whether he agreed with Piker's 9/11 comments.

"Of course I don't think 9/11 was justified. Because you appear with somebody doesn't mean you agree with him on everything."

So the sequence is: El-Sayed publicly rejected the idea that 9/11 was justified, and Rogers went out and told Michigan voters that El-Sayed believes 9/11 was justified.

Rogers' campaign was asked for proof. It didn't have any.

PolitiFact did what fact-checkers do. It asked the Rogers campaign for the evidence.

The campaign couldn't produce a statement from El-Sayed. What it offered instead were two clips: one of El-Sayed calling the blowback "cancel culture" when asked to disavow Piker, and one of him declining to say whether he'd campaign with Piker again.

Rogers campaign spokesperson Alyssa Brouillet's defense:

"Abdul was asked point blank if he'd disavow Hasan Piker's comments, and he wouldn't do it. That tells you everything you need to know."

That is a real thing you can criticize an opponent for. "He wouldn't disavow someone else's comment" is a fair political attack.

But that is not what Rogers said. Rogers said El-Sayed believes America deserved 9/11. Those are not the same sentence, and Rogers — who framed the whole attack around his own law enforcement work "hunting terrorists" — knows exactly how much distance there is between them.

As PolitiFact put it in their ruling: "Rogers pointed to a seven-year-old statement from another person — not from El-Sayed — to support his claim."

The part PolitiFact said out loud

The fact-check didn't stop at "false." It named what the attack was doing:

"The incendiary attack by Rogers on El-Sayed, who is Muslim, evokes tropes about Muslims and support for terrorism."

El-Sayed is a former public health official. He is also Muslim. Rogers took a comment made by someone else, stapled it to the Muslim candidate, and framed it with his own record "hunting terrorists."

That's the move. It only works if you already assume something about the man it's aimed at.

We've written about this playbook before, because Rogers is not the only Republican running it. Scott Perry spent ten minutes on the House floor arguing against the pocket Constitution he was holding — specifically the part about no religious test for office. In Little Rock, a "Sharia takeover" panic turned out to be five houses, two of them lived in by Christians.

"There's no way for him to know every view of every volunteer"

Here's the hypocrisy, and it's a big one.

Rogers' whole case is that El-Sayed is responsible for what a person he appeared with said seven years ago.

Rogers has been asked about the views of people on his own campaign. Not people he shared a stage with once — people he hired and appointed.

The Metro Times reported that Rogers built a "Faith Coalition Leadership Team" that included Linda Lee Tarver, who petitioned the Michigan Supreme Court to seize Detroit ballots and block certification of Biden's win, and who called federal LGBTQ+ protections a "godless, demonic, satanic and wicked agenda of the devil."

When Metro Times asked Rogers about his own team members' records, his campaign said:

"There's no way for him to know every view of every volunteer — no candidate does."

There it is. When it's Rogers' own hand-picked coalition, he cannot possibly be expected to know what they believe. When it's his opponent sharing a stage with a streamer, the opponent personally holds every view that streamer ever expressed.

It gets worse. Metro Times also reported that Rogers' "Students for Mike Rogers" team included a member who replied "Send them to North Korea?" to a post asking what should be done about "these people," an apparent reference to Jews. His University of Michigan campus coordinator defended participants in the leaked Young Republicans group chat that featured "I love Hitler," gas chamber jokes, and racial slurs, writing: "Loyalty is the only political virtue that matters."

And Texas oil billionaire Tim Dunn — who told a Jewish former Texas House Speaker that "only Christians should hold leadership positions" — gave $5 million to a super PAC backing Rogers. That was more than 98% of everything the PAC raised in the first half of 2025. Rogers has never publicly addressed it.

Guilt by association is Rogers' entire argument this week. He should be careful with it.

This is a habit, not a slip

A Pants on Fire rating in August is not an isolated bad day.

Rogers lost the 2024 Michigan Senate race and then claimed it was stolen — after having called that exact behavior "third world dictatorship" stuff in 2021. He has now built two straight campaigns on saying things that aren't true about how Michigan votes and who Michiganders are.

Michigan has real problems Rogers could be running on — energy bills, health coverage, what tariffs did to farmers and manufacturers. His record on all of them is on his report card below.

Instead, the day after the primary, he told voters his opponent thinks America had 9/11 coming.

It wasn't true. A nonpartisan fact-checker said so in public, with receipts, and gave it their worst possible rating. Rogers has not corrected it.

Source

Caleb McCullough, "In Michigan Senate race, Mike Rogers falsely ties Abdul El-Sayed to Twitch streamer's 9/11 comments," PolitiFact, August 7, 2026. Photo: AP Photo/Paul Sancya.