Republican Mike Rogers has provided no evidence that Democrat Abdul El-Sayed “believes that America deserved 9/11,” as Rogers falsely claimed in a statement this month. Instead Rogers’ Senate campaign has pointed to past comments made by a liberal political commentator. El-Sayed said in April that the 2001 terrorist attack on the U.S. was not justified.
Rogers released the statement attacking El-Sayed, who is Muslim, after El-Sayed won the Aug. 4 Democratic primary in the race for Michigan’s open Senate seat. El-Sayed, a former Detroit public health official, will now face Rogers, the Republican nominee and a former congressman, in the general election.
Among other claims, the Aug. 5 statement released by Rogers, an Army veteran who chaired the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said, “I spent years hunting terrorists and bringing Osama bin Laden to justice. Never in a million years did I think that I would be running against someone who believes America deserved 9/11.”
The Rogers campaign has not responded to our request for supporting evidence. But the campaign told PolitiFact that the 9/11 claim was based on a video of El-Sayed declining to disavow comments made by Hasan Piker – a popular Twitch streamer who has campaigned with El-Sayed.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee also referenced Piker’s comments in a recent digital ad attacking El-Sayed that says, “When his ally claimed America deserved 9/11, El-Sayed refused to disavow him.”
During an Aug. 21, 2019, livestream in which he responded to Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw saying in a Joe Rogan interview that American involvement in the Middle East was not the reason for the 9/11 attacks, Piker said, “This is so insane. America deserved 9/11, dude.”
For those comments — which he later took back — Piker was suspended for one week from the Twitch streaming platform.
That same month, in an interview with Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks,” Piker said, “No, obviously not,” when asked if he meant that America deserved to be attacked.
He said, “While that is a very viral quote that is going around currently, if those people were at least even remotely charitable or cared about the actual truth of what I was talking about, they would understand that within context I was simply referencing the fact that all of the foreign policy decisions and our arming of the insurgent groups in the region, and our efforts in destabilizing the Middle East have a direct consequence, a boomerang effect rather if you will, in causing 9/11.”
Piker added that he advocates against and abhors violence, and that he had been frustrated by Crenshaw’s comments in the Rogan interview. “I know that I was inappropriate,” he said, referring to his 9/11 remarks.
When El-Sayed and Piker appeared together at an event for El-Sayed’s Senate campaign on April 7, a reporter asked El-Sayed if there are “any views that Hasan holds that you disavow.”
El-Sayed said in response, “I’m not here to disavow people’s views. I’m here to have a conversation about how to get money out of politics, put money back in pockets, and pass Medicare for all. That’s the conversation that folks are here to listen to.”
He continued, “This whole gotcha game, platform policing, cancel culture, I thought we were over it.”
The NRSC ad suggests that El-Sayed was addressing Piker’s 9/11 comment. He wasn’t asked specifically in that instance about that remark.
However, El-Sayed did disavow Piker’s comment when previously asked about it.
Before appearing at the campaign event with Piker, El-Sayed did a “Fox & Friends” interview earlier the same day and distanced himself from Piker’s controversial remarks. (Jump to the 3:50 mark in the video.)
“Of course I don’t think 9/11 was justified,” El-Sayed said. “Because you appear with somebody, doesn’t mean you agree with them on everything.”
The Democratic candidate again addressed Piker’s comments when asked in an Aug. 9 interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” if he disavowed them.
“Of course. Of course, it was a dumb statement,” El-Sayed said. “I think Hasan, himself, would say that was a dumb statement. He disavowed it. So, yes, America didn’t deserve 9/11.”
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