10/26/26: Lula Defeats Bolsonaro, Mehdi Hasan Exposes AIPAC, Early Vote Omen For GOP

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But the right there, extremely shocked, disappointed, and selling off as many assets as they can, watching Lula's victory. Joining us to talk, about this will be Juan David Rojas, who was down in Brazil over the past couple of weeks covering the election. Juan, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me on, guys. So there were some rumors in the last couple of days that polls were showing an extraordinarily tightened race. It seems like there are pockets of voters who didn't turn out in the first round, who did turn out for Lula this time, when, I guess, they kind of realized, oh, wait a second, Flavio Bolsonaro might actually win this. And not as many of the minor parties who lost, supporters, went to Bolsonaro as they thought. What, did you see any of this coming? Like, what do you think happened between the first round and this final round that shift these results so dramatically? This is a truly shocking victory. I thought that Lula was going to win. I thought that Lula was going to lose. And in fairness, the polls were sort of wrong in both directions. They were wrong in the first round, and they didn't expect Bolsonaro to win in the first round. He got the most votes. They thought that Lula would get the most votes. And then in the runoff, a lot of them were 50-50, but many still had Flavio Bolsonaro slightly ahead. What I think happened in the first round, for instance, is that a lot of the support for third candidates dropped off and went to Flavio Bolsonaro, evidently, at the last minute. And in the second round, wow, the PT really went into overdrive. I saw this in every city I went to. I went to five Brazilian cities, and you just saw PT people handing out flyers everywhere, holding rallies. Lula went around the country, which really was incredible. He's 80 years old and is still extremely sharp mentally. He arrived, like, running to this demonstration of, like, 300,000 people in Sao Paulo. And Andreja Noni has been really credited as a federal deputy for the PT, put together this social media following, like this WhatsApp group, which was over the course of just the first and second rounds, gained, like, 10 million followers, 7% of the electorate. It was really, really crazy. So this is historic in every way. No Brazilian president had ever won a runoff after losing in the first round. And, of course, Lula is elected to a historic fourth term. Now, at the same time, this is also -- I hate to rain on everyone's parade, but this is really a pyrrhic victory, because Bolsonaro-Ismo made huge gains in Congress. They won something like half of all seats that were up for grabs in the Senate. They nearly controlled the Senate. So this is going to be really tough in Lula's next term. Let's put this map up on the screen, guys. This should be D3. We can see the shift towards Lula from the initial election to the runoff. And the red arrows that you see here, it's a little backwards from what we're used to in the U.S., but the red shifts are towards Lula. And you can see in the vast majority of the country there was a shift towards Lula. Let's also put the Polymarket image up on the screen here. We had a major gambling app fail. They really thought -- you can see at the peak -- they really thought that Flavio was going to win going into this. And then as the results came in, it just drops off a cliff and totally flips. So, you know, no real insider, no real sort of like intuition or instinct that went against the polls here. And one of the things that I did see, Juan, is that one of the pollsters came out and said basically like, "Look, we were so worried about underestimating Flavio and the Bolsonaro movement this time that we put our thumb too much on the scales in the other direction, and we missed what was going on here." Very, very possible. Yeah, like I said, I mean, the amount of support I saw for Lula on the streets was insane. And, you know, in the past, like support on the street wasn't necessarily correlated to vote totals. But, dude, like over the weekend, there was a rally in Sao Paulo that had like supposedly half a million people. It was apparently like the largest demonstration in the country's history, potentially. Wow. Yeah, really, if you look at the data, what he managed to do was drive out people who abstained in the first round. Abstention in the first round actually was the highest in history, something like 22%. And that dropped off significantly in the second round, I think by like a few points. So it's really stunning. Even some of, I saw that potentially even some of Flavio Bolsonaro's voters in the first round evidently ended up abstaining. Oh, wow. In the second round. So it's truly shocking. And really, like, I'm going to be honest, Lula has had a lot of failings in this term. By far, this has been the most disappointing of his three terms so far. But the thing is, on the other hand, like, he was literally running against a bunch of guys, an entire family, who lobbied to accidentally and intentionally tariff and sanction their own country. So, I mean, it's really an indictment on Bolsonaroismo. Now, Flavio is saying that he doesn't respect these results, that he's crying foul. What do you suspect, there's also been some reports that he might just leave. But given the fact that they did so well in Congress, what do you expect his future is? Because on the one hand, he's, you know, he's feeling quite vulnerable. On the other hand, he's complaining that the results were not fair. On the other hand, his movement is at the lower level, surging. And what irregularities is he referring to, and where do you see this going? Yeah, there were irregularities. I don't think that they affected the result. What happened yesterday was, in a handful of cities with mayors controlled by Bolsonaro allies, they were screwing around with transportation to polling stations and PT areas. And there's been back and forth over this, but anyway, like, Lula complained and requested an extension to voting. And there was also inclement weather in the south of the country, where Bolsonaro is really strong. So both candidates actually ended up requesting an extension. But once polls had already closed, a single justice, Cristiano Zanin, who was Lula's personal lawyer, issued a monochromatic decision. Brazil has this ridiculous judiciary where, like, single justices can, like, make these extremely consequential decisions. But he ruled that, yeah, voting would be extended by two hours. But the problem was, a lot of the voting machines had already been turned off, and once they're turned off, you can't turn them back on. So apparently, a lot of people who might have been able to vote still weren't able to vote. In fairness, I saw something that apparently the amount of people that were able to vote after 5pm once polls closed, or were supposed to close, was still pretty minimal, only like 30,000, something like that. So I don't think you can really dispute the results from what I've seen, at least. But I, you know, that was definitely irregular. I mean, that had never happened in Brazil's history. Requested this. So it's hard to cry foul when you're just like, you requested the same thing, but then you don't like the result. It's pretty plain what's going on there. Lastly, one, and we've got many standing by. So we'll have to have you back to have a more in-depth discussion of this. But, you know, what does this mean globally? Brazil, obviously, extremely consequential player. A lot of Latin America has shifted to the right, with the Trump regime really helping that, that movement towards the right along. So what will this mean globally and for relations with the U.S.? Yeah, you know, I haven't seen anyone else pick up on this, but actually Trump, if you look at him, he did not issue a formal endorsement of Flavio Bolsonaro. Like, you know, he typically does his like truth endorsements. Now, obviously, you know, it's implied that he has his backing. I mean, Flavio Bolsonaro literally went to the White House. Oh, and, you know, got like a terror designation for like Brazilian drug gangs, whatever. But, you know, I don't think that's going to happen. But I think they might have omitted a formal endorsement because they thought it would probably help Lula. I mean, every time the tariffs before, there were two rounds of tariffs this year and last year that extremely helped Lula in the polls when he was down, actually. And in Latin America, I mean, this is the first left wing party to win re-election since Morena in Mexico in 2024. Every other election has been lost by left of center parties. So and here's where I say, look, this is really important not to like it's really important to get the right lessons from this result. What I would say is that because Bolsonaro did so well in the Congress, there are some serious questions about the legitimacy of Brazil's Supreme Court. There was this Epstein like scandal implicating a bunch of people, including people in Lula, Lula's government and also Flavio Bolsonaro. And actually the justice that convicted Jair Bolsonaro. Flavio Bolsonaro's dad took like millions of dollars from this evangelical banker and a lot of the rest of the Supreme Court. They were trying to protect themselves. This really energized Bolsonaroismo and is why they came out to vote so massively in the Congress. So both Lula and Flavio promised to reform the Supreme Court. I think he's going to have to make good on that decision. Otherwise, seriously, like I would not rule. Out impeachment proceedings at some point during this term. One really appreciate your analysis. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks, guys. It's the rage bait. We got clear facts. NBC News reporting for America. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. The message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop. With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. OK, one judgment. Anyway, give it a try. MintMobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only. Then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at MintMobile.com. Are you ready to make a change in your life? 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No, but this is a tremendous new documentary. Let's start with a little bit of it. We can roll this clip here. What is it that you fear about speaking out? I'm afraid of some form of retaliation from APAC. I decided to speak out because I'm disappointed something has to change. You may know APAC as being one of the biggest and most recognizable donors to many of the members of Congress in your state. A former director of APAC said the lobby is like a night flower. It thrives in the darkness and shrivels in the daylight. This is great, man. APAC and what it's supporting is very unpopular right now. And that is the moment where some. The sunlight shines on the night flower. Do you feel like APAC operates as a foreign agent for Israel? Matty, there's another interesting moment I wanted to roll before we go into the conversation, actually. If we could just go ahead and put up E3, too. I imagine there must be times, though, when you're preparing to lobby on the Hill that you would talk with Israeli officials and coordinators. Well, I don't want to go into that. To talk to somebody who does not coordinate. There were people who had some. Let's drop it. I have no direct information. Not sure what you're getting at. I have no direct knowledge of anybody coordinating with anybody outside with any other government. But suspicions or something? i don't know can you just kind of explain what you're not on camera many what i particularly liked about this film was that it sort of doubles as a window into american politics from the 1980s up until today and how it's evolved and also israeli politics and the u.s israel relationship as it has evolved kind of together, co-evolved, I would say. What struck you the most about the history as you were looking back at it? Yeah, so Dion Nissenbaum, the Pulitzer Prize-winning former Wall Street Journal Middle East reporter who made this film, when he started working on this film, AIPAC wasn't as central to our politics as it's become in recent months. I guess timing has been great for us in terms of this film coming out in the past week and all eyes being on AIPAC, especially post-Michigan primary and pre the general. But what's interesting is, excuse me, there's been a lot of coverage of AIPAC, its role in financing Democratic primaries, its role in spending a record amount of money in Michigan and St. Abdul El-Sayed, the role of Republican billionaires in funding AIPAC. But there hasn't been as much coverage in terms of AIPAC's role itself in our political system and whether it should even have to register as a foreign agent. And that is the focus of this film, the FARA Act, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires lobbies that are coordinating with foreign governments to register as foreign agents so we don't have secret foreign government interference in American politics. And this is a debate that's been going back, as we point out in the film, to the 1960s. This has been going back to Robert Kennedy, the good RFK, not the one we currently have, who actually suggested the precursor organization to AIPAC should register as a foreign agent. So did Senator William Fulbright many others over the years, and it never has. And this debate is now back. And this film lays out quite a lot of evidence for why a DOJ, maybe run by the Democrats, not by the Republicans, clearly, should actually investigate whether AIPAC is acting as a foreign lobby. And we speak to whistleblowers. We speak to former officials like Douglas Bloomfield, you just saw there, who was a chief lobbyist, legislative director for AIPAC for nearly a decade in the 80s. And they all seem like they want to say something about Israeli government coordination. We interview Keith Weitzman, who says on camera, yeah, I passed on classified information that the Pentagon gave me to the Israeli embassy in D.C. So, Mehdi, what AIPAC's defenders will say, and some of them do say in your documentary, is this is not an organization representing a foreign government. This is a group of Americans who believe that it is good for America when you have a strong U.S.-Israeli relationship. And you say to them what? So it is the main argument that this is an American group, stop trying to bracket us with Israel. And that's a fair argument. But what's interesting in this film is you have someone like Sam Lauter, who Dion speaks to, who is from DMFI, Democratic Majority of Israel, a pro-Israel group, let's just be very clear. He calls himself an AIPAC prince in the film. His mother was one of the co-founders, one of the big drivers of AIPAC when it was founded. And even he says, while he says, look, I don't think it's a foreign lobby, I don't think it's a foreign agent, but even he says, I do have to remind AIPAC, and he's distanced himself from AIPAC because it's so uncritically pro-Netanyahu. He says, I do have to remind my friends at AIPAC that the A in AIPAC stands for American. So even former supporters of AIPAC are saying, guys, where is your loyalty right now? Remember that you are an American group, not just uncritically pushing an Israeli agenda. We interview a former DOJ lawyer in the film who's an expert on FARA violations, and he makes the point, look, you don't have to be perpetually funded by Israel or controlled by Israel to register. You just have to have even one instance of coordination that forces you to register. And it's interesting that in this town in D.C. where we are, Crystal, the Republicans, they want to have codification. Pink, the far-left anti-war group, register under FARA for alleged ties to a Chinese communist party. They want to have Al Jazeera, where I do a show. They've been trying to get them registered as a foreign agent for a while. The bar is very low when it comes to groups the Republican Party does not like. But when it comes to AIPAC, the bar is raised high. It's see no evil, hear no evil, even though, as we say in the film, we have a former whistleblower who says, he says, AIPAC is acting as a foreign agent in spirit, if not the letter of the law. So there is enough here for Democrats, if they ever take back Congress, if they ever take back the White House and the Justice Department to actually investigate. But the problem, of course, is people like Hakeem Jeffries, the future speaker for a Democratic House, take a lot of money from AIPAC. Right. What also struck me about this film is the extent to which AIPAC is energized to go after Jewish politicians, but not because incidentally they are Jewish, but precisely because they are Jewish. You get into now, you know, there was the famous case, Andy Levin, the synagogue president, and you also get into some of these Chicago races. Right, exactly. Running against some Chicago races where Daniel Biss was running against an AIPAC backed candidate. There was also a pro-Israel support, like AIPAC guy who'd gone to every AIPAC convention for like decades that they drove into the ground. Talk a little bit about, um, Daniel Biss opening up about his meetings, um, with, with AIPAC and how that race unfolded, because that was, that's pretty, pretty extraordinary example. Yeah. So this Chicago primary earlier this year had, uh, I think it's Laura Fine was the AIPAC backed Democratic candidate. There was Daniel Biss, the mayor of Evanston, who's a liberal Zionist. I mean, he's not some anti-Zionist Israel hater. He's a liberal Zionist Jewish American politician whose mother is Israeli and whose grandparents are Holocaust survivors. Right. This is not some flaming anti-Semite or a person you can, you know, smear as an anti-Semite, but he'd been critical of Israel's war in Gaza. He'd been critical of the Netanyahu government and AIPAC decided to spend against him. And yes, they forced out Bruce Lee on a conservative, uh, uh, an Orthodox Jewish member of the community, a conservative Democrat, um, pro-Israel Democrat. And he, and actually Ryan, you'll enjoy this. He came to our premiere, uh, that we did in Chicago last week for Nightflower and he got cheered by the audience. He had nothing but praise for Kat Abu-Ghazala, who was a Palestinian American also in that race who AIPAC spent against. And it was interesting that this is the destructiveness of AIPAC right now that they're willing to take down even, uh, liberal Zionists who don't tow the Netanyahu, uh, far right Zionist line. They did it to Tom Malinowski, uh, in New Jersey and ended up with an even more, uh, anti-Israel, uh, congressional candidate on the democratic side. So a lot of these, um, interventions by AIPAC are backfiring severely for them. But look, Daniel Biss has what I think is the line of the film. Uh, he tells Dion in the film, and I want to read out to you. He says, AIPAC basically performs anti-Semitic, tropes and then criticizes the people who just described the thing that just happened for allegedly being anti-Semitic. It's really disingenuous. It's really dangerous. You're inviting them to dabble with real anti-Semitism because in his race, AIPAC didn't just spend against him. They spent against him via groups that had names like elect women and progressives or whatever. Like AIPAC does not do this openly. It's super PAC, United Democracy Project hides behind other organizations, shell front groups, which then wrap up and you see it is really United Democracy Project. So these people are operating in a way that they're not doing it because they're operating behind the scenes in the shadows with these kind of fake front groups, which is why we call the film Night Flower, which comes from the quote from the AIPAC official, former AIPAC official, the late Steve Rosen, who said the lobby is like a night flower. Uh, it withers in the sunlight, it blossoms in the dark, and that is what they're doing. And that's what Daniel Biss of all people calls out. So, um, it seems like AIPAC and to your point, um, you know, they've been less upfront about when they put money into races because they become so incredibly toxic. Let's put E4 up on the screen, because both you and Ryan over at Dropsite have done extraordinary reporting about this dark money flowing in from AIPAC. The lever has a new comprehensive report tracking all of these other groups with these, you know, like democratic women and all these other names that sound, oh, progressive, they sound good, completely obfuscating who is actually behind this. Um, let's also put E2 up on the screen because this is another really quite shocking shift for AIPAC. They say they are not going to directly endorse. Yeah. Um, and they're not going to directly endorse, um, candidates because again, it has become such a toxic organization, mostly on the left, but also a growing sentiment on the right as well, where it's at least complicating for candidates. So do you think that we're entering a new era here with AIPAC? Certainly in reputational terms, AIPAC has taken a massive hit. You even had Mike Rogers, Crystal telling AIPAC at the start of the general campaign that he was doing as Abdullah said, like, don't publicly spend for me. He was still doing fundraisers with them in California, but like, don't put your name on anything in Michigan because he knew how toxic the brand has become. I would point out, we should be careful about the bait and switch. AIPAC is saying we won't directly give money to candidates. They, my understanding is they only give three or four million directly. Maybe I've got the number, uh, lower or slightly higher than the exact number, but through their super PAC, they give tens of millions, maybe a hundred million, uh, in this race, the United democracy project. And that super PAC is a new development, uh, in AIPAC's approach to politics. Traditionally, they never had a super PAC. They helped bundle money for congressional candidates, but didn't directly give. So when they say we're not going to directly give, they're really going back to what they did before, but they're leaving the act and the super PAC still operates in the shadows behind these front groups and running ads against, you know, they ran ads against Cori Bush and Jamal Bowman successfully in 2024 and helped defeat those guys in, in very expensive primaries, but they defeated them by saying, oh, they don't back Joe Biden. They don't support the bipartisan infrastructure bill. They didn't run ads saying they hate Israel. What I love about this documentary too, is that you got Dion to do it. A tremendous, uh, investigative reporter, um, who really puts his, those investigative skills to work in, in kind of sifting through what, uh, you know, what AIPAC has been doing for the last, um, several, several decades. And I really did appreciate, uh, this is, this is quote, because it has been our experience here at breaking points and over at dropside too. We covered these Chicago races and you start looking in and you're like, wait a minute, elect Chicago women. This is a PAC that didn't exist like two days ago. And now it's spending hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars. Like that's not how organizations work. You know, they usually launch, they have a gala, they raise, they do fundraising. They do fundraising. They do fundraising. They do fundraising. They do It's not easy to wake up and all of a sudden have several million dollars. And so then you start connecting the dots by saying, oh, the treasurer here has also been a treasurer for an APAC pack. The ad buyer they're using has worked with APAC before. Oh, this nonprofit that they're using, this is connected to APAC. And so you do that reporting and say that, like, all of the evidence is that APAC is working behind the scenes to spend money here. And immediately APAC will say, you know, you're just, you know, engaging in anti-Semitic tropes. Like, how dare you do that? It's like, no, I'm describing the precise behavior of this organization at this precise moment. And they don't have to behave in that way, right? If you want to spend $100 million under Citizens United, you legally can. I don't like it. But legally, nothing's stopping you from doing it. But come out and say, hey. We're spending $100 million because we love Israel, and we want these candidates to love Israel. And we want them to support Israel. The fact that you're not doing that tells us, number one, you know what a toxic issue Israel is in Democratic Party politics and with the American public right now. And number two, you're behaving in this deceptive, secretive way. And again, as Daniel Biss puts it, promoting these anti-Semitic tropes, performing anti-Semitic tropes by hiding in the shadows and not being transparent about your lobbying efforts. You know, people say to me, why do you pick on APAC? What about the other lobby groups? I'm against all of these lobby groups. But it's interesting that APAC behaves in this way. And I think Bernie Sanders has said it best, that the Democratic Party can't overturn Citizens United overnight, obviously. It requires a constitutional amendment with the current Supreme Court. But what it could do is come up with rules that disincentivize, basically prevent candidates in Democratic primaries from taking APAC money. And it's a point I made to Neera Tanden. You mentioned Neera Tanden. When I interviewed her for my Al Jazeera English show head-to-head recently at Georgetown, and she agreed in principle that none of these groups should be involved in primaries. Although she wouldn't say APAC shouldn't be allowed in. She kept saying all groups. She did an All Lives Matter because she can't, you know, give people a clip of her saying she's anti-APAC for whatever reason you and I can speculate. But even in principle, even she accepted this argument that we need to push now that at the very minimum in Democratic primaries going forward, including the presidential primary in 2028, there need to be rules that prevent a Republican-funded group that may or may not be coordinating with a foreign government from spending on Democratic Party primary candidates. Yeah. I pushed Representative Adam Smith on the same thing. I remember. And he was just in denial that that was even possible. It's like, well, it's the Democratic Party. They can set their own rules for their primary. And he just was adamant that that was not even theoretically possible. I do want to move on to APAC's perhaps top target in the entire nation, Abdullah Syed, running for Michigan Senate. But before we do, Maddy, just tell people where they can find the complete documentary so they can watch this extraordinary work. Thank you so much. It's a Zateo-produced film. Please do become a subscriber. You can watch the film at InsideAPAC.com. Excellent. And it really is great and gets into the history and does a deep dive. And I think you'd be hard-pressed to come away from it and not feel that they are just doing Israel's bidding. And there are some key turning points in there, in particular with regard to the Obama administration, the JCPOA. It's the rage bait. We got clear facts. NBC News. News. Reporting for America. This is Matt Rogers from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. This is Bowen Yang from Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang. 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You know, I can't say that I agree with everything that's gone on. You know, I wish that first debate had been more about, you know, that rubber stamp for Trump, because we got a lot of chaos in Michigan. You know, I don't want to debate, you know, who's the enemy of the United States. It's very clear that Iran is. I didn't run my campaign on foreign policy issues. But that was litigated. In my primary, you know, I'm not looking to be front and center right now. I'm looking to be on the team to support, you know, my next governor, Jocelyn Benson. And frankly, these great Democrats who are working their tails off, who are going to make Hakeem Jeffries the first black speaker of the House. You didn't mention Abdul El-Sayed in that last answer. Well, look, I would just say you had asked me if I'm still on the team. I'm on the team. Your thoughts, Matty? That's so painful to rewatch. I watched that yesterday. You're making me watch it again on a Monday. Torturous. I'm furious, actually, watching that clip. And just thinking about how giddy and happy Dana Bashworth there was saying, you didn't mention Abdul El-Sayed. We'll park Dana for a moment there. On Haley Stevens, furious about the answer for multiple reasons. Number one, she endorsed Abdul El-Sayed already. She came out and said, I endorse him. I, at the time, was one of many people. I don't know if you did, Christopher. I came out on Twitter and said, good job, Haley Stevens. This is really good that she's doing this. Uniting the party to stop Mike Rogers, the Trump magazine. So what is the point of now disowning or walking back your own endorsement in this way with less than 10 days to go? I don't understand it. Number two, to do it on the day when Barack Obama is in Michigan campaigning for Abdul El-Sayed is just ridiculous. If Barack Obama can go out and endorse Abdul El-Sayed, Haley Stevens can endorse Abdul El-Sayed. Number three, to not say his name, right? She went out, you noticed that twice she spoke. Twice she would not say his name. She said Jocelyn Benson's name. Dana Bashworth mentioned it again. She will not mention him. I find that odious. I find it disgusting. At a time when Donald Trump is using the worst racist Islamophobic rhetoric against Abdul El-Sayed for a Democrat in Michigan who lost a race against him, who is apparently a proud Michigander, proud Democrat, anti-racist. Why is she not saying his name? Why is she not defending him from Donald Trump's racism, saying, oh, I just call him Mohammed because I'm the president. He's a jihadist. He should go through a metal detector, Trump said this weekend if he enters Congress. Not a word of defense. from Haley Stevens, the same people who go on and on about anti-Semitism and bigotry, Islamophobia just normalized from them. They don't give a damn. So I was furious watching that clip on so many levels. And by the way, I'm most furious because of the hypocrisy. If Abdul El-Sayed had lost to Haley Stevens and turned up on CNN less than 10 days before the general had been asked that question and refused to say her name, number one, Democrats would have gone nuts saying he's a traitor. This is what the left does. They're helping Trump and MAGA, and they would have accused him of whatever it is. Oh, he's against her because she's for Israel, et cetera, et cetera. So I just find the whole thing so odious, so hypocritical. And by the way, dangerous for Democrats. I hate to be the I told you so guy, but in 2028, when a bunch of leftists decide to sit down because it's Gavin Newsom or Pete Buttigieg on the ticket, and they say, well, you guys didn't support Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, they'll be right to point that out. And Democrats will regret dropping their vote blue no matter who, except when it's Abdul El-Sayed or a leftist. They don't like in Michigan. I just find the whole thing nauseating, hypocritical, infuriating, racist. And I was also struck by the difference between how some people like Haley Stevens, Neera Tanden, and other Democrats are treating this primary, and others, some of the never Trumpers, like Tim Miller over at the Bulwark, for instance. Once the primary was over, he has been agitating, saying we're all in. In fact, he recently, had some new reporting on Mike Rogers that is very interesting. I don't know if you saw this, but last week or so, Mike Rogers threatened to sue Dropsite because we had reported that his second wife took over basically, or launched the American branch of this British security contractor, and immediately started getting hundreds of millions and then more than a billion dollars in contracts. We had reported that his second wife took over basically, or launched the American branch of this British security contractor, and immediately started getting hundreds of millions and then more than a billion dollars in contracts. We had reported that he took seven trips to Iraq, or he says that he took seven trips to Iraq in the in the 2000s, while she was over there as the spokesperson for Paul Bremer. I had kind of suspected that they may have met at that point. Turns out Tim Miller reports, they already knew each other, knew each other. And this is this is an important detail. So let's roll F2 here. Christy, then now Rogers, Christy Clemons, she was the finance director for his congressional campaign in 2000. um she'd been a lifelong staffer in lansing you know working for the state legislature that kind of person um she's married to her child our college sweetheart at the time chad mike is married to his first wife this is 2000 then mike gets elected to congress she gets a job in dc not working for mike though and then she gets a job in iraq working for paul bremer it's a pretty good job to get for somebody had been a lifelong staffer in lansing and i think a lot of national security people probably wanted that job working for paul bremer then mike goes on seven codels to iraq in only a few years that's kind of a lot i don't know you were doing a lot of codels seven and a couple feels like a lot yeah then in 2006 she comes back to dc and starts doing defense contracting lobbying it's kind of surprised people but her at her level of success in that 2007 mike divorces his wife okay then they get married during that time he rises to the head of the house intel committee she stays as a defense contract and not contract lobbyist um she keeps getting more contracts she ends a massive 10 billion dollar deal a few months after he takes over the committee that's just something that just happened seems like maybe on one of the contracts she worked on there's some dispute about this in the story but but people can read it for themselves um was uh doing security in benghazi i don't know how that turned out um drop site news has all the specifics um you can see then also on his financial reports you know the chart going up um and a lot of that money was his new one you can see that he's got a lot of money in his bank account he's got a lot of money in his bank account anyway i don't know exactly what was happening between the year 2000 and um 2007 when he divorces his wife i don't know exactly anything about whether he had roles in her just shockingly successful career getting money for defense contracting so it turns out that christy clemons who later became his second wife was his you know finance chair for his 2000 campaign so he knew her before she she went to iraq and meanwhile rogers and his and christy rogers and his wife were rogers deny any wrongdoing um want to say that uh but meanwhile rogers has made abdul al-sayed's family a huge part of of this election how how do you assess kind of Rodgers' effort to say he's going to sue us over this compared to the way that he talks about Abdul El-Sayed? So, well, first of all, the kind of the free speech warriors in the Republican Party, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Mike Rogers, they love free speech until they see a lawsuit they can file, a spurious defamation lawsuit they can file against media or political critics. And I'm sure Dropsite will stand its ground and stand by its reporting. And I suspect if he loses, he may just go away quietly. We'll see. It's interesting that he's doing this, you know, so close to the election, making all this noise. But it's interesting. Look, he claims he didn't do anything wrong. Abdul El-Sayed says he's got nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood. He doesn't know about his mother's alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. But bringing family in, again, is the hypocrisy. I said this recently on social media, Ryan, like, OK, you want to ask questions about Abdul El-Sayed's mother. That's fine. Do we get to talk about Donald Trump's father, who was allegedly arrested in the 1920s at a violent KKK rally? He's only ever been asked about it once, back in 2015, when he launched his campaign by the Washington Post. In the last decade, I've never seen a single reporter ask Donald Trump or a single interviewer, let's talk about your dad. Was he a member of the Ku Klux Klan? Never asked that question to Donald Trump in the last decade. So, you know, if you want to go after family members, let's just be consistent. As for Mike Rogers and the actual claims in your article, I just find it fascinating that the mainstream media just decided to give this veteran Republican, former chair of the House Intel Committee, guy who's running, by the way, for the Senate. He lost to Alyssa Slotkin in 2024. This is his second attempt at trying to get the Senate seat. Where's all the coverage? And by the way, just props to Senator Alyssa Slotkin, who's been an outspoken campaigner for Abdul El-Sayed, hasn't behaved as awfully as Hayley Stevens. I just want to give a shout out to a centrist who understands what's at stake. But Mike Rogers has just had a pass. For example, it was a Detroit local paper, Ryan, that pointed out that Mike Rogers voted to send money to the Mohammed Morsi Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt. It was Mike Rogers who told Reuters in 2012. There are moderate Muslim Brotherhood members that we can work with. Can you imagine if there was a quote from Abdul El-Sayed saying that on the record? And yet it required a Detroit paper to do that story. And then Kristen Welker did it on Meet the Press yesterday, less than 10 days out from the election. Why wasn't he asked this question a long time ago? Rogers had a complete pass from mainstream media, while the mainstream media obsesses over Hassan Paika and everything Abdul El-Sayed's ever done in his life, going back to captain of the high school football team or whatever it was. That's been examined. So I just find the conversation is very, very important. And I think it's a very, very, very complete pass for this Republican, just so odious. And I'm glad you mentioned Tim Miller and the Bulwark, because some of the Never Trumpers, not all of them, but some of the Never Trump Republicans do understand what's at stake. I don't have to agree with them on foreign policy or health care or whatever it is. But one thing I've always respected about some of the Never Trump Republicans, again, I say some, is that they understand that what's at stake in a way that many centrist Democrats do not, even some on the left do not. And I think that's important. That's why Tim Miller was upset with Neera Tanden when she came on his show, that she was upset of a Hassan Paika at a time when Mike Rogers was getting a free pass. And I think it's interesting that Neera Tanden, whose best pals with Hayley Stevens, as she told me on my show, has not said a word since yesterday. I can check her Twitter again. I know she tweets every seven seconds, but I'll check after this show. She hasn't said a word at the time of this taping about Hayley Stevens not endorsing Abdul El-Sayed. She kept telling me, I'm totally on board. I want Abdul El-Sayed to win. We've got to lock in for Abdul El-Sayed. Why isn't she calling out Hayley Stevens, her friend, for not getting behind Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan? Why is Tim Miller more pro-Abdul El-Sayed than Hayley Stevens, or apparently Neera Tanden? Yeah. Hayley Stevens and Jasmine Crockett both need to get it together with this mess. I did want to ask you, though, Trump was in Michigan for a rally with Mike Rogers over the weekend. A Klan rally. Yeah, exactly. And some great photos there of the two of them just embracing happy as could be. But when Mike Rogers was asked whether he considers himself a MAGA Republican and whether he will be a reliable vote for Trump, he said, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Donald Trump. He struggled with these answers. Connie. Yeah, let's go ahead and take a look at that, F3. Congressman, we're almost out of time. So let me just ask you big picture. Do you consider yourself to be a MAGA Republican? Listen, I'm going to tell you, I get you guys on the national press, but this is a little bit disgusting to me. You know what you don't cover? The chairman of the Democrat Party just came out and said he cannot, the former chairman, sorry, he cannot vote for Abdul. Can you answer my question? All you want to do is talk about something else. No, your campaign, are you a MAGA Republican? I've already answered the question, Kristen. That's just what I want to know. Kristen, I'm going to go right back through this. There is a reason we have support from people in Detroit and Flint. I know that President Trump is going to be out in Michigan campaigning with you a little bit later on today. Let me ask you, Congressman, are you a vote for the Trump agenda? I'm apologizing. I'm having some difficulty in my earpiece, but is a vote for you? I'm not sure. I'll tell you what a vote for me is. It's a great day for the state of Michigan. Amazing. Very convenient earpiece issues there for Mike Rogers. Yes. I mean, he's practicing to be a Republican member of Congress who always, have you seen this Trump tweet? I haven't seen the tweet. Do you hear what he said? I didn't hear it. Mike Johnson's classic response to everything. Every question is, I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't seen the president. So he's just practicing for that role he'll have to play once he gets to the Senate. It is shameless cowardice. Again, this is all happening very late in the race. These interviews, these questions should have been put to Mike Rogers weeks, months ago. He's had a complete pass on the mainstream media, which is what annoys me when some of us say, why are you talking so much about Hassan Baik? It's not that Hassan Baik hasn't said controversial issues. It's not that Hassan Baik should be immune from criticism. It was the disproportionate attention paid to a Twitch streamer from California, rather than the veteran chair of the House Intel Committee who lied about seeing Bin Laden's body in person when he was killed and all sorts of other nonsense that he said over the years and his role with Big Pharma and allegedly helping the opioid crisis, as Abdel El-Sayed has accused him of. None of that has had the coverage and he's had a complete pass. And that's what frustrates me when I have these arguments with people like Matt Iglesias and Neera Tanden say, well, look how good Roy Cooper and Mary Peltola are doing. It's like, well, they haven't had these kind of races with the mainstream media on one side, with the president of the United States. They're just completely attacking Abdel El-Sayed in the most vicious, racist terms. I mean, all we talk about in D.C. and in our media is about anti-Semitism on the left, anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party. Find me one Democrat, one mainstream Democrat, left, center, wherever, who speaks about Jews in the way Donald Trump speaks about Muslims. It just isn't any kind of comparison. There's never been any kind of comparison. Nobody would ever dare talk about Josh Shapiro or J.B. Pritzker or John Ossoff in the way that Donald Trump has spoken about Abdel El-Sayed. He's a jihadist. He's a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He needs a metal detector if he comes to Congress. I call him Muhammad. In fact, I call all Muslims Muhammad because that's what most of them are called. I'll call him whatever I want. This kind of disgusting stuff, don't even get me started on the Somali racism that's just been given a pass is insane. I just, even by Donald Trump's standards, we are at full on KKK neo-Nazi levels of racism, which is why the Michigan race is so important, because if they win with this racist campaign, they will just escalate it in the run up to 2028. Yeah. Absolutely. And we have, we have a few numbers that we can talk about real quickly, but we can put up F5 here. I think the hope among Abdel El-Sayed supporters who see this incredible amount of racism coming their way, you know, I've, I've heard from, you know, people with access to internal polling that all of the fear mongering has, you know, has affected the unfavorables of, of El-Sayed. But there's also a huge kind of national blue wave underway and you're starting to see a lot of people who are, you know, who are, you know, who are, you know, who are see that express itself in Michigan, where in counties carried by Kamala Harris, they're at about two-thirds of their 2024 pace so far, whereas in counties carried by Trump in 2024, they're at about 45% of their pace. So more Democrats are coming to the polls, according to the early vote in Michigan so far than Republicans. That might be enough to kind of carry El-Sayed over this kind of wave of racism that's being pushed his way. Mehdi, have you been tracking any of the early vote, or what's your sense as we get down to the wire of this very consequential race, as we talked in the last segment about the role AIPAC has played? This could be a Waterloo for AIPAC, or could be. a huge victory if they're able to come back and put Mike Rogers over the top. Yeah, I mean, they spent tens of millions in the primary, tens of millions in the general. Look, I don't trust any polls anymore. There's just been too much misinformation, disinformation, mistakes. We saw the nonsense with this fake polling company, Wedgwood Polls. We saw the mistakes in the Francesca Hong primary. We've seen Republicans constantly being kind of understated by polls over the last decade, especially in the Trump era. I suspect it'll either be a very. very close race or not close at all. I don't think there'll be a middle ground. I think the polls will be kind of completely off, or it's going to be super tight nail butter. Of course, Alyssa Slott can beat Mike Rogers by half a percentage point in 2024. That was in a year that was bad for the Democrats. The Matthew Iglesias of this world keep telling me that he shouldn't win by half a percentage point because there's this national blue wave. And I keep saying, well, don't forget, he's running in a very sui generis race where the president is attacking him day after day. His own former party chair won't endorse him. His own former rival won't endorse him. And, you know, this is a very, very unique Michigan race. Look, a win's a win. If he wins, it's going to be historic. The Republicans know it's going to be historic. There'll be some centrist Democrats who will do a, well, versus the generic ballot, and nobody can. at that point. Good luck with that argument. Everyone knows it will be a historic, insane win and that he will be a very valuable member of the Democratic caucus in the Senate. But it is going to come down to the wire. Those numbers, I mean, put the numbers to one side. Just talking to people on the ground in Michigan who were there this weekend and knocking on doors and have been living there. I mean, the ads that Mike Rogers is spending, yes, of course, they're going to drive down favorables. You can't get through a football game in Michigan on TV without an insane number of anti-Abdul ads. And they're not ads about Abdul support for Medicare for all, I can assure you. They're ads about his radical jihadist connections and his mother's Al-Qaeda links and Muslim brotherhood and all the usual bullshit. And this stuff works. I mean, look, we're an independent media. I used to work for MSNBC. You know, we understand corporate media is in decline, but it still has a lot of power. The airwaves still have a lot of power. Look at what's happened in the UK. Non-stop, several weeks of negative coverage of anti-Zionist Jewish leader of the Green Party, Zach Polanski. His numbers are down. People think that the Green Party is now anti-Semitic. It's led by the only Jewish party leader. When the mainstream media gets together as a group and goes for someone, they still have the power to change reality, change perceptions, change images. Let's not understate that in any way. Yeah. And it would be one thing, you know, in terms of this discourse about who's electable and who's not electable, it'd be one thing if they were attacking him on his issue positions. If they were demonstrating that, oh, Medicare for all just won't sell with a general election audience. But that's not what they're doing at all. Their entire campaign is just racist hate. And he's got a weird, weird name. That's the whole thing. What is what is unelectable even mean? This is the discussions I've been having recently with the nearers and Matthews of this world. I just had an argument online with Liz Smith, who was obviously working with Mallory McMorrow, a Democratic consultant about, oh, well, he's not electable. Well, this is the problem with electability versus Roy Cooper. Does anyone really seriously believe that Roy Cooper, for example, is of the caliber of Abdul El-Sayed? Genuinely, if you arrived from Mars and you saw these two people on the stump campaigning, no one disputes Abdul El-Sayed as a great public speaker. No one disputes his charisma. Bill Clinton told him to run for public office when he was a college giving a commencement address. His policy positions, as you say, are super popular. In fact, in Michigan, Medicare for all is insanely popular and has been helping his numbers. The focus group showed that he's getting more Trump voters from 24 than other Democratic candidates in swing states. What is this? What does it mean to say he's not electable? On paper, he's got everything. He's got public speaking. He's got charisma. He's a local boy. You know, he was captain of the football team. He's got popular policy position. So really, what you're saying then is he's unelectable because, as you say, the different name and the Muslim background, and he went against Israel. Yep. And because Democrats joined up with Republicans making common cause on exactly that ugly smear campaign and a campaign, too, based on ethnic division in the state of Michigan. Crystal, there's a great line in the Matthew Iglesias interview. I know a lot of bits have gone viral, but one line that hasn't been spotted is he says, well, Roy Cooper, he says, what does it mean to be? How is he dividing people? He's not divisive. People are being divisive about him in bringing up things about him. And he says, well, Roy Cooper's not divisive in that way because Roy Cooper doesn't take positions that make people spend against him, which I thought was a rather revealing admission. Basically, if you don't want to be spent against by dark money groups, don't go against special interests, which is an interesting message. Yeah. Well, I mean, you have to hand it to Matt Iglesias. He's very consistent on that point. Also made some extraordinary, yeah, extraordinary points about how we should have just rampage tapping. We should have let ICE just murder people in the streets and not said anything about it because it was, in his mind, not electorally advantageous, even though that did not even be true. Yes. Matty, always great to have you, my friend. Thank you so much for your time and your analysis. Thanks so much, guys. Appreciate it. All right. That'll do it for us today. Again, if you want to help us fix this studio, go to breakingpoints.com, do the one month free trial, but don't cancel when the month is over and we will try to produce the kind of that makes you want to keep going. Crystal, thanks for struggling through the sickness. Hope you're feeling better tomorrow morning. Yeah, I feel like the voice is getting stronger, so I should be. I feel fine. It just still sounds like crap. You know how it is. Yeah. The only way out is through. That's right. 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