On Monday's Morning Joe, MS NOW host Joe Scarborough accused Fox News anchor Bret Baier of parroting hate against Abdul el-Sayed and cheered the Michigan Democrat's evasive response to his question about having connections to the Muslim Brotherhood.
MS NOW's Morning Joe
October 26, 2026
7:25 a.m. Eastern
BRET BAIER (from the October 23 Special Report on Fox News Channel): Mike Rogers has been really hitting this Muslim Brotherhood thing. I know you don't want to talk about your family and the history there, but he goes back -- he goes back -- he goes back to his campaign.
(cross talk)
ABDUL el-SAYED: No, no, no, no, no. Let me just stop you there. You are asking this question --
BAIER: No, no.
el-SAYED: -- to raise a question about --
BAIER: I'm not.
el-SAYED: -- whether or not I have dual loyalty.
BAIER: This is a specific -- his campaign said today --
el-SAYED: My loyalty will be to the Constitution of the United States.
BAIER: Thank you.
el-SAYED: And as -- as every Senator who has ever served, I will swear an oath to that Constitution.
BAIER: He said.
el-SAYED: I'm not interested. I'm not interested in --
BAIER: In any of the back and forth? The 2012 statement --
el-SAYED: In a 2012 statement in a letter --
BAIER: You don't want to walk that back?
el-SAYED: You're going to pull that out of context.
BAIER: I'm not pulling it out.
el-SAYED: You're going to ask questions about my allegiance. Let me just be brief.
BAIER: This is Rogers's campaign -- I'm just asking you about that.
el-SAYED: Don't be Rogers's campaign.
BAIER: I'm asking a question.
EL-SAYED: Be a journalist.
BAIER: I am.
el-SAYED: So, as a journalist, if you're asking the question about my allegiance to the Constitution, I have never been a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. I never will be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. I am interested in serving the United States. I'm interested in swearing an oath to the Constitution that every Senator has swore an oath to. If the question about my faith is the issue which Mike Rogers wants it to be, I think it is sad and beneath him and frankly, beneath the President of the United States to make that an issue because, under our Constitution, you're guaranteed the right to pray as you choose to pray.
MIKE ROGERS, MICHIGAN REPUBLICAN SENATE NOMINEE: He's accepted campaign donations from organizations, as I said, and even the literal spokesman from the Muslim Brotherhood. I'll tell you, as a former FBI agent, I can tell you we would call that a clue. (pause for audience reaction) But we sure know that Abdul el-Sayed does not belong anywhere near the United States Senate.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Oh my God. Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, Mike Rogers, once again alleging his Democratic opponent, Abdul el-Sayed, has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, a connection el-Sayed continues to disavow. As we saw in that Fox News interview from Friday with Bret Baier.
SCARBOROUGH: Well, you know, the thing is, I mean, again, I will tell you for people who don't know Mike Rogers, I served with him.
BRZEZINSKI: That's not Mike Rogers.
SCARBOROUGH: And Mike was -- I liked him very much. He was a solid Michigan guy. I say that because I -- I have relatives in Michigan, and I love -- love solid Michigan people unless they cheer for the Wolverines and -- but he -- he was a serious guy. He -- he had great impeccable national security credentials. And it's just sad. It really is. And I do mean this. It is sad to see him shrink to this level, to stoop to this level, talking about how because he's a Muslim, that he's some terrorist because his mother worked with some charities, that he's like a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, or he's this with the Muslim Brotherhood. I got to say, good for him also, when Bret (Baier) was coming after him again, just trying to parrot all of the hate -- hate attacks from the Rogers campaign, saying, Don't -- don't -- don't be a Rogers campaign person, be a journalist."
And, of course, there is a back story there. You know what he did with Kamala Harris and misleading her? Playing -- playing, I think -- I think video was wrong there. Yeah, so it is -- it's unfortunate. And I just do want to go back. I just have to ask the question to Arab Americans in Michigan: How do you feel now about voting for Donald Trump in 2024? I knew it was a stupid thing for you to do in 2024. Was Joe Biden really that much worse than Donald Trump? And did you not have evidence going back to 2015, when Donald Trump tried to push through a Muslim registry in his campaign promise to push through a Muslim registry? Did you have no idea that that's not how this was going to end? Well, it ended that way.
BRZEZINSKI: A lot of people --
SCARBOROUGH: Just like when I see some Hispanics going, "Oh, I can't believe -- I can't believe that he's being so brutal in his deportation tactics," when Donald Trump promised, I believe, in Michigan during the campaign that the mass deportation would be -- and I quote Donald Trump, "bloody" -- a bloody mass deportation. So you voted for him in '24, and you were shocked that he actually did what he said he was going to do in '25. Well, I got to say, in this case, in Michigan, this is just like Ohio. I know Ohio and Michigan. They hate each other. Well, they have one thing in common. The Republican candidates are overreaching. Ramaswamy -- who, from what I understand was Pablo's best friend at Harvard -- Ramaswamy --
PABLO: How dare you?
SCARBOROUGH: -- has overreached.
PABLO: You will hear from my lawyers on that.
SCARBOROUGH: And he's going to pay for that. He just will, most likely, politically -- all the polls suggest that he will pay for that.
PABLO: Yes, he will.
SCARBOROUGH: And then look at Michigan, and it's the same thing here. You know what they could have very easily said? You know what the winning message in Michigan was? "He's one of those DSA guys."
BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.
SCARBOROUGH: "They're going to drive up your taxes -- they're going to pass regulations that are going to cripple Michigan businesses -- they're going to drive people out of the state of Michigan -- you're not going to have a job -- entrepreneurs will never come here -- we've been struggling to rebuild Detroit now for 20 years -- you get a DSA left-wing radical in --" No. Instead, they've gone with a "He's a terrorist -- he's connected to al-Qaeda -- he's connected to Muslim --"
BRZEZINSKI: They've gone Trump.
SCARBOROUGH: People don't believe that. It's like when I first ran, you could have easily said, "He's not smart -- he's a dumb country lawyer -- he's never been in politics." Instead, they attacked me for being a rock star. It was a lie, I swear to God. That was the closing thing. They said, "Oh, he's like a hippie rock star or whatever, going to church 12 days a week." And they overreached. It was stupid. And this overreaching never works.
JONATHAN LEMIRE: And it's emblematic of the Trump era, the Ramaswamy -- who I guess has always been, you know, somewhat sleazy in his personal attacks. But then we see Mike Rogers, who you say did have a good reputation, but he's debased himself because he thinks that's what the politics of the moment calls for -- that that's what Trump expects. He thinks that's what Republican voters want. Well, we're going to find out in a few days if that's true.
SCARBOROUGH: The thing is, he won't even admit that he supports Donald Trump's policies.
LEMIRE: He's trying to have it both ways. ...
