Tucker Carlson Says He'd Never Vote for GOP's Mike Rogers, Backs Democrat Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan Senate Race

Tucker Carlson has picked a side in Michigan's Senate race, and it's not the Republican.

Carlson told Breaking Points co-host Saagar Enjeti he "wouldn't vote for Mike Rogers at gunpoint," calling the former House Intelligence Committee chairman a "tool of Israel and the intelligence agencies," according to a report from thesource. In the same conversation, Carlson agreed with Enjeti that Democrat Abdul El-Sayed's platform, opposing foreign aid spending while focusing on domestic costs like healthcare, is "literally Trumpian."

Carlson doubled down in his newsletter around the 25th anniversary of September 11, defending El-Sayed after Rogers' campaign called the Democrat's past comments on the War on Terror "disgusting," according to The Independent. El-Sayed had said he would spend September 11 mourning that day's victims and the next day mourning victims of the wars that followed.

"Understanding that the Bush administration was wrong to kill hundreds of thousands of people and waste trillions of dollars in Iraq, even though, again, Iraq did not do 9/11, is disgusting?" Carlson wrote, according to The Independent. He argued El-Sayed "did not celebrate airplane hijackings or cheerlead Al-Qaeda" and was simply making a point about American foreign policy. Separately, according to thesource, Carlson wrote that the U.S. "slaughtered enough civilians to account for dozens and dozens of 9/11s."

Not the Only One on the Right

Carlson isn't alone in warming to El-Sayed. Fox News host Jesse Watters said after a combative on-air interview with the candidate, "I actually like Abdul. I probably shouldn't like him, but I do," while still calling him "a little bit of a lunatic" who'd make "a terrible senator," according to The Independent.

That interview also produced a lighter moment. El-Sayed challenged Rogers to a football game, a story Fox News covered on Fox Report Weekend with correspondent Alexis McAdams.

Where the Rest of the Right Stands

Vice President JD Vance has drawn a hard line in the opposite direction. Vance has called El-Sayed "crazy" and "evil" while continuing to back Rogers, though he's said his disagreement with Carlson won't affect their friendship, according to thesource.

The Daily Wire took a sharper tone. A Ben Shapiro Show episode framed Carlson's endorsement as backing an "America-hating, pro-jihadi" candidate. That's a loaded characterization the show's own hosts make as commentary, not a factual claim established anywhere else in the reporting. Nothing in the record shows El-Sayed expressing support for jihadist violence. Rogers, for his part, has called El-Sayed an extremist and argues his 9/11-era comments show he doesn't sufficiently center American victims, a position his campaign is entitled to make and voters are free to weigh.

A Race That's Actually Close

Whatever the noise around Carlson, the race itself is tight. A new poll conducted for the Detroit News and WDIV-TV by pollster Richard Czuba put Rogers at 45.8% and El-Sayed at 44.4% among 600 likely voters, with 9% undecided, according to Breitbart. That 1.4-point edge sits inside the survey's 4-point margin of error, and Czuba called it a toss-up.

That's a reversal from recent surveys. An EPIC-MRA poll had El-Sayed up four points, 47% to 43%, and a Susquehanna poll over the summer had him up seven, according to Breitbart. An AARP poll had the two essentially tied, while a separate Fox News poll gave Rogers a four-point lead.

Czuba tied the shifting numbers directly to President Trump, whose approval registered at 35% in his survey. "We cannot talk about this Senate race without talking about Donald Trump's numbers, because they are literally the elephant in the room," Czuba said, according to Breitbart. He noted more than 80% of undecided voters in the race disapprove of the president. Czuba also flagged a 10-point enthusiasm gap between committed Republican and Democratic voters, the widest he's measured across four election cycles.

Rogers leads among independents by nearly 14 points and runs stronger with voters over 40 and without a college degree. El-Sayed leads with younger voters, college graduates, and Black voters, per the same poll. Chris Turner, a voter in Inkster, told the Detroit News he distrusts El-Sayed and opposes his push for single-payer health care. "I really don't want someone screwing with that again," Turner said.

El-Sayed, who is backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has said he does not identify as a democratic socialist. He won August's Democratic primary over Rep. Haley Stevens despite being outspent roughly nine-to-one after Stevens received $30 million in support tied to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, according to The Independent.

What Comes Next

Michigan's Senate seat is one of the more closely watched contests determining whether Democrats hold their current Senate footing. With the race inside the margin of error and roughly two months before Election Day, the open question is whether Carlson's endorsement moves any actual votes, or whether it's a media story that plays out mostly online while Rogers' ground game with independents and older, non-college voters carries him through. Czuba's enthusiasm gap, not Carlson's newsletter, may end up being the more decisive number.