On Friday night, October 9, 2026, Mike Rogers (MI) was taking questions from reporters at a campaign event in Highland Township, Michigan. Standing beside him was Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican who had come to campaign for him. Kennedy told the reporters that Rogers' opponent, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, a Muslim American doctor, sleeps in a bin Laden jersey.
Rogers laughed.
How it happened
The remark came at the end of two days in which Rogers kept talking about AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group.
Thursday, October 8. At the first Senate debate, in Grand Rapids, Rogers was asked about an Axios report that his allies had asked AIPAC to stay out of the race. NBC News reported his answer:
"Anybody that wants to help my campaign stop a guy who can't condemn terrorism in our own country... I'll take all of that help."
El-Sayed cut in: "Again, I've condemned them."
Friday, October 9. AIPAC's super PAC, the United Democracy Project, filed a report showing it had spent $95,000 on mailers against El-Sayed, aimed at 130,000 Jewish voters, per NBC. That is small next to the more than $30 million the same group spent trying to beat El-Sayed in the Democratic primary in August. We wrote about that failed bet, and about the group weighing a move to help Rogers instead.
Friday night. With Kennedy at his side, Rogers told reporters what he thought the new mailers proved:
"This tells you something that you need to know about my opponent: He is so anti-Jewish that one mail piece sends him into orbit."
Kennedy jumped in right after him, according to NBC:
"Look, AIPAC wouldn't come here if Dr. El-Sayed didn't sleep in a Bin Laden jersey."
When NBC asked him to explain, Kennedy didn't take it back. He piled on:
"He supports Hamas. He's antisemitic. He hates Israel. He doesn't feel gratitude for America."
Mediaite described it: "'I'm just telling you,' Kennedy said as Rogers laughed." The Associated Press put it in two words: "Rogers laughed."
It was Rogers' event, in Rogers' state, in Rogers' race, and Kennedy was there for him. Rogers could have said "that's not who I'm running against." He didn't. Kennedy was finishing the point Rogers had just made.
What the "jersey" line is really saying
Osama bin Laden planned the September 11 attacks. Saying a Muslim candidate "sleeps in a Bin Laden jersey" is saying he roots for the man who did it.
Kennedy offered no evidence that El-Sayed has ever said a word in support of bin Laden. Julian Andreone of Drop Site News, who posted the clip, put it plainly: El-Sayed has never said anything in support of bin Laden. "He's just Muslim."
Kennedy's follow-up, that El-Sayed "supports Hamas," doesn't hold up either. On the second anniversary of the October 7 attack, El-Sayed put out a statement that Jewish Insider reported — in a story criticizing him — that read: "Hamas violated these principles in its heinous attack on October 7th. They killed 1,200 people and took dozens of hostages… I condemned it then, and I condemn it now."
That was a full year before Kennedy said he supports Hamas.
Rogers wanted AIPAC's help, as long as it stayed quiet
Back in August, Rogers said he was "proud" to have AIPAC's support, while his own team was privately asking the group to keep its name off the ads. On Friday night there was nothing quiet about it: Rogers called his opponent "so anti-Jewish" for objecting to AIPAC's mailers, and the senator beside him explained AIPAC's spending with a bin Laden joke.
El-Sayed answered. Rogers didn't.
On Saturday, El-Sayed hit back on X, suggesting Kennedy belonged in the Ku Klux Klan:
"That's rich coming from someone who wears his bed sheets out at night."
Neither Mediaite nor the AP reported any statement from Rogers distancing himself from Kennedy's words.
Instead, Rogers went further. On Saturday, October 10, he reposted Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy's words that El-Sayed "really is a terrorist" and wrote that Portnoy was "exactly right." We covered that post here. When a reporter asked whether Rogers really believes it, his campaign didn't say no. It answered with a football joke about Ohio State.
This is the whole campaign, not one bad night
The bin Laden line didn't come out of nowhere. Republicans have spent this race tying El-Sayed to terrorism:
- August: Rogers said El-Sayed "believes America deserved 9/11." The quote belonged to a Twitch streamer, and El-Sayed had said the opposite on Fox News. PolitiFact rated Rogers' claim Pants on Fire and said the attack "evokes tropes about Muslims and support for terrorism."
- August: Sen. Tommy Tuberville answered El-Sayed's criticism of his anti-Sharia bills by calling him a "terrorist sympathizer."
- From the top of the party: The AP reported that President Donald Trump called El-Sayed "Mohammed" and said he "goes back to the days of the Jihad," and that Vice President JD Vance has called him "evil."
We've also traced how Republicans spent $10 million making "Sharia" a campaign word before Michigan nominated a Muslim, and how fast the attacks came once it did.
Rogers is a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and he framed his 9/11 attack on El-Sayed around his own record "hunting terrorists." He knows better than anyone in this race what it means to call someone a terrorist, and what it means to point that word at a Muslim American. Each time, he has either said it himself, agreed with someone who said it, or stood next to them and laughed.
Michigan votes November 3.
What the record shows
On October 9, 2026, Sen. John Kennedy, campaigning for Mike Rogers (MI) in Michigan, said AIPAC was only spending against Abdul El-Sayed because El-Sayed "sleeps in a Bin Laden jersey," then added that El-Sayed "supports Hamas" — though El-Sayed publicly condemned Hamas' October 7 attack in 2025. Rogers laughed, and no statement from him against the remark has been reported. The day before, Rogers had said he'd "take all of that help" from AIPAC, and the day after, he called a post labeling El-Sayed a "terrorist" "exactly right."
Source
- Video of Sen. John Kennedy's remark, posted by Julian Andreone — X, October 10, 2026
