Republican Senate Candidate Accuses Opponent Of Links To Muslim Brotherhood And Attacks Press In Fiery Interview

Republican Senate candidate for Michigan and former Congressman Mike Rogers made a series of incendiary accusations about his Democrat opponent Abdul El-Sayed in a contentious interview on Sunday.

"The national press ... have to twist themselves in knots not to understand Abdul's relationship with the thinking of the Muslim Brotherhood," Rogers told NBC's "Meet the Press" show.

Various chapters and affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood [MB], a transnational islamist organization founded in the 1920s in Egypt, were designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations by the U.S. last year.

Michigan nonpartisan news organization Bridge Michigan has previously fact-checked claims made by Rogers about El-Sayed's supposed ties to the MB. According to the nonpartisan outlet, "there is no evidence that El-Sayed has ties to the organization or pledged support, although he has occasionally weighed in on Egyptian affairs and politicians associated with the group."

Specifically, Rogers claimed that El-Sayed had "family relations with" the MB and wrote a letter "supporting them" in 2012.

Rogers was likely referring to past tweets from El-Sayed's half-sister, including one from 2012 which mentioned the pair's biological mother participating in activism in the MB during the early 1970s. El-Sayed was raised by his father and stepmother, after the former separated from El-Sayed's mother when El-Sayed was three years old.

Also in 2012, El-Sayed signed an open letter calling for Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, a senior official of the MB elected Egyptian President in 2012 after the Arab Spring protests, to purge the police and media of remnants loyal to the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, who was forced to resign as a result of the protests.

When Rogers brought these claims up, Kristen Welker, the host of "Meet the Press," pointed to statements Rogers himself had made in 2012 about the need for the U.S. to "reach out to and talk to ... moderate Muslim Brotherhood individuals" in the aftermath of Morsi's election win when Rogers was Chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

The reference to Rogers' previous statements prompted the Republican to accuse Welker of partisanship and letting El-Sayed lie to her in an interview she conducted with the Michigan Democrat on October 11.

Also, when Welker noted that El-Sayed had told her explicitly in that interview that neither he nor his family had any ties to the MB, Rogers accused her and, by implication, other members of the "national press" of bias and "trying to defend Abdul" and "give this guy a pass."

However, when asked about President Donald Trump's comments about El-Sayed - the president has previously called the Muslim candidate a "vicious, violent jihadist" - Rogers clarified that he didn't agree with the terminology and said that he had "never called him a terrorist."

The MSNOW Michigan Senate poll tracker, as of Sunday, puts El-Sayed three percentage points ahead of Rogers in the race.