Scarborough: I'd Boot Mike Rogers After 15 Seconds for Dodging Questions. And El-Sayed?

On Monday’s Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough unloaded on Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers appearing on Meet the Press, and how he couldn't handle NBC moderator Kristen Welker's questions.

Two weeks ago, Welker gave a softball interview to his opponent Abdul el-Sayed, and nobody on Morning Joe had a comment. Scarborough wasn't in that Monday, but it also didn't come up that Tuesday. But now, Rogers was bumbling and stumbling: 

“Mike Rogers had one of the worst days I've seen a Senate candidate have yesterday. Just a horrific performance live. Kristen Welker asked him some very basic questions. He couldn't say if he supported Donald Trump. He couldn't say if he supported MAGA politics. He couldn't say anything. And he just stood there stumbling for three minutes.

“He would have had about 15 seconds on this show. But I guess Kristen is more patient.”

Tough stuff, Macho Joe!

So tell us, Joe: how many seconds would you have granted Abdul El-Sayed before giving him the boot for failing to answer whether he recognizes Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, or which is the bigger threat to the United States—Iran or Israel?

Scarborough has interviewed El-Sayed twice on Morning Joe, and found an ingenious way to avoid that awful dilemma: he never asked either question.

In the first sit-down, the day after the primary, El-Sayed called Israel an “illegal apartheid regime” that had become “bloodthirsty” and accused it of “genocide.” No one pressed him on Israel’s right to exist. In the second, Scarborough opened with a question about -- fishing. Again, the hard questions never came.

Rogers gets the hypothetical stopwatch. El-Sayed gets the free pass.  Macho Joe’s stopwatch runs only one way.

Here’s something else Joe might ask El-Sayed about—but won’t. He has cozied up to a Muslim Michigan leader who calls for Jews in Israel to be “sent back to Poland,” a classic antisemitic, Holocaust-embracing line.

As the Free Beacon has revealed, El-Sayed sat for a roundtable at the Dearborn offices of Arab American News publisher Osama Siblani, a longtime ally who helped raise $350,000 for El-Sayed at a recent fundraiser. Siblani urged him to “say something right now to soothe” Dearborn [i.e. Muslim] residents unhappy with what they see as El-Sayed’s moderation on Israel and his outreach to black voters. Yeah: that’s the problem: El-Sayed is too pro-Israel!

Siblani’s record is outrageous. He has called Hamas and Hezbollah “freedom fighters,” praised Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as a “hero,” and, at a Dearborn rally, called for Israeli Jews to be sent “back to Poland.” Poland was the primary site of Nazi extermination camps, six of them. El-Sayed has maintained the relationship without public distance.

Note: As you’ll see in the screencap, while Scarborough was making his point, Morning Joe displayed a PBS headline (MS NOW, PBS, so alike): 

Trump escalates rhetoric against El-Sayed as he tries to undermine Democrat in Michigan Senate race

PBS posted an AP article. By definition, any time someone speaks on behalf of one candidate, they're trying, directly or indirectly, to "undermine" the other candidate!

 So, when Obama came to Michigan to speak on behalf of El-Sayed, he was trying to "undermine" Rogers. But here was the headline of the AP article on the PBS site: 

Obama, in Midwest, assails 'cruelty' and indecency from Trump and his allies in the midterm campaign

Here’s the transcript.

MS NOW
Morning Joe
10/26/26
6:08 am EDT

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Mike Rogers had one of the worst days I've seen a Senate candidate have yesterday. Just a horrific performance live. And also, Kristen Welker asked him some very basic questions. He couldn't say if he supported Donald Trump. He couldn't say if he supported MAGA politics. He couldn't say anything. And he just stood there stumbling for three minutes.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Yeah, it was painful to watch.

SCARBOROUGH: He would have had about 15 seconds on this show. But I guess Kristen is –

MIKA: -- more patient.

SCARBOROUGH: More patient and polite. He just rambled on for three minutes –

MIKA: He refused.

SCARBOROUGH: But refused, refused to answer the question.

MIKA: Yeah.