A Michigan Democrat’s campaign aide compared Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers’ patriotic Woodward Dream Cruise video to white flight and a Ku Klux Klan cross burning.
Rogers posted footage Sunday showing him riding in the passenger seat of an antique red Ford pickup as it cruised down the road with two American flags flying from the tailgate. Toby Keith’s “American Ride” played in the background.
“Gotta love this American Ride! There’s no better way to do the Woodward Dream Cruise!” Rogers wrote in the post accompanying the video.
But Mason Pressler, El-Sayed’s political manager in northern Michigan, saw something far darker in the display.
“Mike Rogers’ campaign has the aesthetics of a 1960s white flight suburb and a KKK cross burning,” Pressler said on X.
The Mike Rogers campaign quickly fired back, accusing Pressler of believing that “driving a Michigan-made Ford truck is akin to the KKK.”
The campaign also added “Old Ford trucks” to its running list of things it says El-Sayed hates.
Gotta love this American Ride! 🇺🇸
There’s no better way to do the Woodward Dream Cruise! pic.twitter.com/gD4heq06Gk
— Mike Rogers (@MikeRogersForMI) August 16, 2026
El-Sayed communications director Roxie Richner told Fox News that Pressler did not speak for the campaign, pointing to language in his X biography stating that his posts reflect his personal opinions.
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The uproar comes as El-Sayed faces scrutiny over a brand of left-wing politics that has alarmed even some fellow Democrats, who consider him too far left.
El-Sayed has campaigned and partied with socialist streamer Hasan Piker, who is known for saying “America deserved 9/11,” praising Mao Zedong and Communist China, arguing that capitalists should be murdered in the streets and making a string of antisemitic comments.
Videos uncovered among the hundreds El-Sayed hid from public view on his YouTube channel also showed him arguing against the Second Amendment.
In a separate essay that later resurfaced, El-Sayed compared President Donald Trump with Osama bin Laden.
Fox News Digital previously reported that El-Sayed received more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from 41 people who work for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The United Arab Emirates has designated CAIR a terrorist organization, while Florida and Texas have formally designated or labeled the organization as such.
Controversy has also surrounded El-Sayed’s family.
His sister, Eman Abdelhadi, is a socialist professor at the University of Chicago who was arrested last year for allegedly spitting on a police officer during an anti-ICE protest outside an immigrant detention facility in Broadview, Illinois.
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