Ana Navarro went on her podcast Friday to call out the racism and Islamophobia faced by Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Senate race. The political pundit said the commentary surrounding El-Sayed reminded her of another key political race: Barack Obama vs. John McCain.
“The big deal here is that Abdul El-Sayed is a muslim, and Republicans from the top down, starting with Trump on down, have attacked him for being a muslim,” Navarro said on “BLEEP! with Ana Navarro.” “They’ve done an entire grift on his name, called him Mohammed, called him this, called him that. They’ve said he’s a jihadist. They’ve called him a terrorist. They say that he’s going to require going through a metal detector in order to enter the Senate. They’ve tied him to the Muslim Brotherhood. They’ve said he’s dangerous.”
Navarro compared the commentary from Trump and his colleagues to a town hall at which a woman told John McCain she couldn’t trust Obama, calling him “an Arab.” McCain then defended his opponent, calling him a “decent family man” and saying that people didn’t have to fear him as a prospective president.
“You see, that is the right thing to do,” Navarro said. “But instead of doing that, Mike Rogers in Michigan, Republican running for the Senate, has allowed this to happen. And I can’t tell you how disappointed I am.”
Navarro went on to say that she knew Rogers during an overlap in their tenures at CNN. At the time, she believed Rogers to be “a guy with a moral compass,” but said that watching him allow these narratives about El-Sayed to continue had changed her perspective.
“A man who stays silent as people around him just drum up this Islamophobic, racist, ugly, ugly, dirty campaign against his opponent has no moral compass and does not deserve to be in the U.S. Senate,” Navarro said. “I thought he was different. I guess he’s not. And I’ll say this: Winning an election is not worth losing your soul, and Mike Rogers has proven that he has lost his soul.”
