The “fact checkers” are marching in line with the elitist media in slamming Republican Mike Rogers for pointing out Abdul el-Sayed’s sketchy choice of allies like Hasan Piker. On Thursday, Snopes slammed Rogers as “False” for a statement that said “Never in a million years did I think that I would be running against someone who believes America deserved 9/11.”
On Friday, PolitiFact threw a “Pants on Fire” rating at the former congressman under the header:
Abdul El-Sayed “believes America deserved 9/11.”
PolitiFact’s Caleb McCullough laid out his evaluation: Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat and a former U.S. House representative, cast his Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed as “an extremist,” after the Aug. 4 primary election….The attack draws on an El-Sayed campaign connection to popular influencer and Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, but the comment is not something El-Sayed said. El-Sayed campaigned this year alongside Piker, who said 'America deserved 9/11' in 2019 and has since walked it back."
The Rogers camp was allowed to make its case:
PolitiFact asked Rogers’ campaign for evidence to support Rogers’ statement. The campaign pointed us to a clip of El-Sayed at a campaign event being asked if he disavows Piker’s comments and describing the blowback as “cancel culture.” The campaign also pointed us to a clip of El-Sayed declining to answer when asked whether he’d campaign with Piker again.
“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,” Rogers campaign spokesperson Alyssa Brouillet said.
El-Sayed is still staying away from condemning Piker, as they noticed:
Since winning the Aug. 4 primary, El-Sayed has not said whether he will campaign with Piker again ahead of the general election.
“I’m not as focused on who I’m campaigning with. I’m focused on who I’m campaigning for,” he told MSNOW’s Jacob Soboroff on Aug. 5. He gave a similar answer to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.
McCullough is also the PolitiFact writer who gave El-Sayed a "Pants On Fire" a month ago, the first time PolitiFact had given that flaming rating for a Democrat in almost two years. By contrast, a glance at the "Michigan" page for Snopes found no check on El-Sayed's facts, but it previously flagged a pro-Rogers group that used AI to make Rogers look muscle-bound.
On Saturday, New York Times fact-checker Linda Qiu also jumped on the bandwagon. Qiu is a bit like CNN's Daniel Dale, who almost uniformly fact checks Trump and Republicans:
False. Mr. Rogers issued the incendiary statement about his opponent, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the morning after Dr. El-Sayed won the Democratic primary. The New York Times was unable to find an example of Dr. El-Sayed stating that he “believes America deserved” the Sept. 11 attacks, and the Rogers campaign did not respond to questions about whether one existed.
