John Kennedy Smears Michigan Senate Nominee With Bin Laden Slur as Rogers Seeks 1st GOP Seat in 25 Years
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Oct 23
John Kennedy Smears Michigan Senate Nominee With Bin Laden Slur as Rogers Seeks 1st GOP Seat in 25 Years
2 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Oct 23
Summary
At a Michigan campaign stop, Senator John Kennedy told reporters Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed “sleeps in an Osama bin Laden jersey,” escalating an already bitter race.
Mike Rogers, 63, smiled as Kennedy made the remark, underscoring how the former House Intelligence Committee chairman has aligned with a harsher Republican campaign style.
The attack follows other anti-Muslim broadsides: Donald Trump has called El-Sayed a “jihadist,” and Rogers backed Dave Portnoy after the internet personality labeled him a “terrorist.”
El-Sayed’s campaign called the rhetoric “heinous,” while Rogers’s team said he was “spewing hate” and pointed to criticism of his response to a Hezbollah-inspired attack on a Michigan synagogue.
Michigan’s contest to elect its first Republican senator in a quarter century has become a vivid example of the racial and religious toxicity shaping the final stretch to Election Day.