This Dem Uses Fox as a Platform for Hate

Islamophobia is a seductive thing when you're a Biden flack turned lobbyist with a liking for the limelight and Bari Weiss to try to impress. Plus, Newsmax takes attacking Abdul El-Sayed to extremes.

Good evening, and welcome to this week’s ‘Ragebait.’

Justin Baragona here, bringing you the latest media dispatches from the right-wing industrial outrage complex and Bari World. In tonight’s edition, we look at why a former spokesman for Jill Biden is publicly endorsing a Trump-backed Republican for Senate, and why it may not be all that surprising. Also, if you thought Fox was bad with the anti-Muslim hate, you ain’t seen nothing yet, while it looks like Bari Weiss’s right-wing blog is doing the bidding of one of its investors.

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Why Is This Ex-Biden Spox Choosing Mike Rogers Over Abdul El-Sayed?

Michael LaRosa attends “Politico X Showtime”, a cocktails and conversation event co-hosted by Politico Playbook and Showtime’s The Circus, at the International Spy Museum on March 22, 2022 in Washington, DC. Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images.

Days after declaring his support for Michigan’s Trump-endorsed GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers, claiming he couldn’t defend Abdul El-Sayed’s “cowardly” stance on 9/11, Michael LaRosa, a one-time press secretary for former First Lady Jill Biden, doubled down during an appearance on MAGA sycophant Laura Ingraham’s Fox show.

And he made sure to add a dash of Islamophobia too.

Pointing out that he’d already signed a petition calling for New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani to be banned from the 9/11 commemoration next month, LaRosa demanded that El-Sayed fly to the Big Apple and personally address every single person who lost a family member in the 2001 World Trade Center attack.

“He should look them in the eye and tell them that there is no justification for what happened,” LaRosa groused. “I would like him to wipe the grin off his face when he is talking about it, too!”

LaRosa was linking El-Sayed to comments made seven years ago by influential leftist streamer Hasan Piker, who has been campaigning for El-Sayed. Though Piker took those remarks back, saying he “obviously” didn’t mean America deserved 9/11, it hasn’t mattered to El-Sayed opponents who have found their new bogeyman. (Notably, Rogers falsely claimed that El-Sayed “believes that America deserved 9/11” shortly after El-Sayed secured the Dem nomination.)