Rogers Hammers El-Sayed On Terrorism; Convention-Goer Later Yells ‘He Should Be Shot’

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 09/10/2026) (DALLAS) – Republican U.S. Senate nominee Mike Rogers used his national convention speech today to portray Democratic opponent Abdul El-Sayed as sympathetic to extremists and hostile to American values, hours before a voice in the convention crowd could be heard yelling “He should be shot” after U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz mentioned El-Sayed by name.

Rogers’ speech at the Republican midterm convention came one day before the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and was built largely around national security, terrorism and the Michigan Senate race. The two-day Dallas convention also included tributes to the Sept. 11 victims and conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated one year ago.

Rogers opened by recounting his working-class Michigan upbringing, service in the Army and FBI and tenure as chair of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee before invoking Flight 93 passenger and Michigan native Todd Beamer.

He then pivoted sharply to El-Sayed.

“That’s why I never imagined that 25 years after 9/11, I would be running against somebody that campaigns with Hasan Piker, who thinks America deserved it,” Rogers said.

Rogers derisively called Piker, a progressive online commentator, El-Sayed’s “running mate” and accused the two of attacking America and excusing extremism.

Piker said during a 2019 livestream that “America deserved 9/11,” remarks he later said were poorly worded. El-Sayed campaigned with Piker during the Democratic primary but has called the 9/11 comment “dumb” and has said the terrorist attacks were a tragedy that America did not deserve.

Rogers also returned to El-Sayed’s comments following the March attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, when El-Sayed said “hurt people hurt people” while discussing the attacker’s loss of relatives in an Israeli airstrike.

“A man attacks a school to kill children in the name of Hezbollah, and Abdul’s instinct was to excuse it,” Rogers said. “No. Terror is terror. Evil is evil.”

El-Sayed initially condemned the synagogue attack and last month apologized for his subsequent remarks, saying he had intended to provide context and not justify the violence.

“There is never a justification for a terrorist act, period,” El-Sayed subsequently told Jewish Democrats.

Rogers also accused El-Sayed of “funding his campaign with money from terrorist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Reporting has shown El-Sayed received more than $115,000 from individuals who work for or have held positions with the Council on American-Islamic Relations. However, the money came from individual donors, not from CAIR itself, and the federal government has not designated CAIR or the Muslim Brotherhood as a whole as foreign terrorist organizations.

Rogers saved some of his harshest language for the closing portion of the speech.

“He’s a con man. I’m a law man,” Rogers said. “He wants to apologize for America. I want to defend America. He wants to represent Palestine. I want to represent Michigan.”

Later Thursday, El-Sayed’s name surfaced again during Cruz’s convention speech.

Cruz began by denouncing the violence that killed Kirk, the Sept. 11 attacks and the two assassination attempts against President Donald Trump, saying political hatred “just keeps getting worse and worse.”

He later listed several figures he characterized as representative of the Democratic Party’s movement toward socialism and Islamism.

As Cruz mentioned New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a voice from the audience could be heard yelling, “He should be shot.”

Cruz then said El-Sayed had spoken of an “obligation” to follow Sharia law.

“He should be shot,” the same voice could be heard saying again.

The phrase was heard a third time when Cruz subsequently mentioned Texas Democratic U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico.

Cruz continued speaking without acknowledging the remarks. It was not clear whether he heard them.

The episode came on a night when the convention simultaneously focused on political violence, Kirk’s assassination and the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. National coverage of the Dallas gathering also noted that El-Sayed had emerged as one of the Democratic candidates most frequently targeted by Republican speakers during the two-day event.

El-Sayed responded in an interview with CNN's The Source with Kaitlan Collins today that he is a dad with two daughters and that he hopes they are able to grow up with their dad around.

“This is what has become the norm in our politics. I mean, literally calls to violence and the inability for anybody to actually call it out,” he said. “Democracy is supposed to be the process by which we solve our problems peacefully. We can learn to disagree agreeably. And when you hear that kind of call to violence, it should be shuddering to all of us. We have a responsibility to lower the temperature, to realize that this is not a bloodsport, where you're just trying to bash the other guy. This is about actually solving problems that real people face."