President Donald Trump was invoked so often during Wednesday night’s Michigan U.S. Senate debate that he practically became a third candidate on stage, as Democrat Abdul El-Sayed repeatedly tried to tie Republican Mike Rogers to the president.
El-Sayed mentioned Trump 18 times over the hour-long debate, calling Rogers’ responses “MAGA bingo” and accusing him of leaning on Trump-aligned talking points rather than answering for himself. The phrase became a running bit through the night, with El-Sayed shouting it out after Rogers accused him of backing socialist policies, open borders and defunding the police. Rogers eventually turned the joke around, suggesting the real bingo game was counting how many times El-Sayed worked Trump’s name into an answer.
But Rogers did not fall in line with the president on everything. He called Trump’s tariffs a “mixed bag” and said the tariffs imposed on Canada may have been “not well thought through.” He also broke with Trump on Chinese automakers, arguing Congress should ban Chinese companies from building cars in the United States — a position at odds with Trump, who has said he’d be open to the idea. El-Sayed pressed Rogers on whether he’d actually stand up to the president on that point.
Wednesday’s debate was the second meeting between the two candidates ahead of Michigan’s midterm election, a race drawing national attention both for its role in the fight for Senate control and as a test of how far left the Democratic Party can go in a battleground state.
Progressive Backing, Pointed Attacks
El-Sayed has run on a progressive platform that includes Medicare for All, higher taxes on wealthy Americans, ending U.S. military aid to Israel and abolishing ICE, and he has drawn support from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. During the debate, he painted Rogers as a Trump-aligned “corporate politician.”
Rogers, for his part, repeatedly accused El-Sayed of a “pattern of deception,” saying the Democrat has misrepresented his record and shifted positions. Rogers tied El-Sayed to the Democratic Socialists of America and brought up his past support for defunding the police. He also claimed some of El-Sayed’s donors and supporters were tied to Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood, at one point asking him directly, “Are you for America or are you for these terrorist groups overseas?”
The debate’s most heated exchange came on a question about public safety. Rogers pressed El-Sayed over past support for defunding the police, accused him of deleting old social media posts on the subject, and raised comments El-Sayed had made involving former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, who was backed by the Muslim Brotherhood.
El-Sayed called the line of questioning “shameful” and said it was “beneath” Rogers to question his commitment to the Constitution, adding that he was “proud to be an American.”
El-Sayed, a Muslim and first-generation American whose parents emigrated from Egypt, has faced scrutiny throughout the campaign over his rhetoric on the war in Gaza and his positions on Israel, prompting some members of Michigan’s Jewish community to publicly reject his candidacy. Rogers said during the debate that his own campaign was doing well with Jewish voters, whom he described as fearful of El-Sayed’s rhetoric.
Rogers argued El-Sayed is too “extreme” for Michigan voters, citing prominent Democrats who have said they can’t support the party’s nominee, including a former chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party and the former finance chair for Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s campaign.
Michigan Republicans picked up that theme after the debate ended, pointing to El-Sayed’s past campaign appearances with Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who once said America deserved the 9/11 attacks. In a statement, MIGOP Chairman Jim Runestad said the party “cannot afford Abdul El-Sayed’s far-left, big-government policies, and we cannot risk electing a person who campaigns with the likes of Hasan Piker and seemingly justified the horrific terrorist attack targeting children and the Jewish community in Bloomfield Hills.”
