Forty-five minutes into the debate in the Michigan Senate, Republican Mike Rogers had already defamed Democratic frontrunner Abdul El-Sayed with five factual references to the Muslim Brotherhood, four mentions of Hamas, four more calls to Hamas and exactly no mention of his mentor and boss, Donald Trump. The former congressman projected all the grace of an increasingly red-faced and agitated Florida timeshare salesman, knowing he won’t close the deal with the kindly elderly couple from Saginaw.
The chaotic debate – at one point the moderator darkly said he would like to be included in the conversation – was eventually placed under the ever-prying gaze of Flock cameras. El-Sayed indicated that, unlike Rogers, he believed your privacy could be violated even if you did not know your privacy had been violated, and argued for federal regulation. Rogers followed a different path. He defended their usefulness in the fight against terrorism, then turned slightly towards El-Sayed.
“Why would that bother you?” Rogers said. And then he said the quiet part out loud. “Well, if you have someone in your family who might be on the watch list.”
El-Sayed smiled or grimaced; it was difficult to say. He glared at Rogers.
“Go ahead and say it, you tiptoed around him.”
Alas, Rogers didn’t say it. He didn’t say that Dr. Abdul El-Sayed — high school football star and overly proud University of Michigan graduate — was Osama bin-Laden’s spiritual son sent by Allah to blow up the White House during his first visit.
But it was heavily implied.
Rogers had been avoiding debate opportunities with the Oxford-educated El-Sayed for a month. It turns out that Rogers’ cowardice in defending his dignity was not a vice. Last night in Grand Rapids, El-Sayed spoke full sentences with coherent thoughts about Medicare for All, a billionaire tax and no military aid for foreign countries. He often crossed the line between confidence and self-importance, a chronic weakness in his public persona. (Maybe you need to be smug when your opponent links you without proof to every modern terrorist gang except the Ninja Turtles and Boko Haram.)
Rogers appeared as all the Biffs – Biff of Back to the future, Biff of Death of a seller – an archetypal bully and loser who panicked the first time El-Sayed punched him in the mouth. (Verbally of course, although it seemed on several occasions that the discussion was on the verge of becoming a full-on MMA.)
El-Sayed was asked early on whether he supported a temporary suspension of the federal gas tax. He said yes and then punched Rogers.
“There’s one thing that’s causing this: It’s the war in Iran, a war that my opponent has cheered on from the beginning. He called it a win-win. I don’t know about you, but when I go to the gas tank, I don’t feel like I’m winning. I don’t feel like our country is winning. Seven months later, eight months later, how long is this going to last? We can do so much better.”
Rogers proposed some obscure policy ideas that could lower fuel prices, but he was forced to admit the obvious regarding the Iranian conflict.
“I believe this is going to end,” Rogers said in a lowered voice. “We need this to end. »
In recent days, Rogers has done an about-face on the Iranian war and the tariff war with Canada, two pillars of Trump’s second term. He even filmed a cringe-inducing commercial in which he said he liked nothing better than drinking a Labatt and watching the Red Wings play Canada’s national sport. (As a former Michiganian, I can say this may be happening across the Gordie Howe Bridge in Windsor, Ontario, but I’ve never seen Labatt blow in a sports bar in Detroit or Flint.)
All Rogers had to sell was fear, but fear should not be underestimated in Michigan, or for that matter in America. El-Sayed’s narrow victory in the Democratic primary, after leading by double digits in most polls, suggests that the $70 million AIPAC paid him created a lot of fear and almost cost him the race. Yet Rogers’ scare tactics seemed to come from an older era, Sacco and Vanzetti say, when even a slightly darker shade of pallor could disqualify you from public life or even public existence. El-Sayed is a Michigan-born Egyptian-American and Muslim, and that, apparently, is different enough that Rogers feels free to rage about El-Sayed’s family’s ownership of Egypt, his father’s land, and the United Arab Emirates, as if they were post-9/11 Afghan caves rather than countries that are staunch allies of the United States.
Eventually, Rogers, in desperation, decided to throw a group of bad guys into word salad and called El-Sayed a crook.
“He took money from groups associated with supporting the Muslim Brotherhood,” Rogers said. “He took money from individuals in his campaign who openly support Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda. He took money from the George Soros family. What we discovered is that this story goes back a long way. Apparently, they paid for his studies in Colombia.”
I was really confused at this point. Did Hezbollah finance his studies at Columbia or was it George Soros? But how could it be Soros because he is Jewish and Rogers kept implying that El-Sayed hates Jews because he is against arming foreign powers, be it Israel or his father’s Egypt.
I need a handful of Advil.
At times, El-Sayed tried to move the debate from a stone fight to a School rock. “He wants to talk about him or me, but the question is about you,” El-Sayed said. “Can you afford your gas? Can you afford your groceries with this guy who will rubber-stamp everything Donald Trump tells him to rubber-stamp? You’re going to continue to pay a lot more because he works for corporations and for Donald Trump.”
Yes, El-Sayed’s political rhetoric was the equivalent of Safeway brand vanilla ice cream, but it provided a welcome contrast to Rogers who went all-in on his closing remarks.
“We can’t afford Abdul, and we can’t risk his ideology,” Rogers said, beginning a verbal guitar solo with no idea where it was going to end. “Think about what he’s proposing: the largest, most massive tax increase in history, taking over your private health insurance and handing it over to the government. Huge increases in your energy costs. I’m Mike Rogers, US Army officer, FBI agent. Don’t listen to this guy.”
Roger was now the guy on the street corner with a 40 that everyone pretended not to see or hear. The debate ended happily and El-Sayed did what every intelligent man does by walking out of the room along with a belligerent fool. He paused and waited for Rogers to clear the area.
Then El-Sayed smiled and exited the stage to the right.
Gn headline
