Michigan 2026 Democratic Senate primary
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Kiriakou calls the 2026 Democratic primary for the United States Senate in Michigan "one of the most fascinating races I've seen in a very long time." It set Haley Stevens, a mainstream moderate backed by AIPAC, the big labour unions and well-funded corporate PACs, against Abdul El-Sayed, backed by the Democratic Socialists of America. The winner would face the Republican Mike Rogers.

The electability argument

Kiriakou frames the race as a test of a claim rather than of two candidates. Establishment Democrats "usually get to argue that the centrist candidate is more electable in the general election because they appeal to independents and to moderate Republicans. But this is one of the first times where it seems like that really is not the case." The wider pattern he points to is five congressional primaries already won by DSA-aligned candidates, at least three of them against incumbents, and real left candidates running in swing states. The open questions he leaves are whether undecided Michigan voters will back a left-wing candidate whose parents are Egyptian, and whether Trump voters will again simply stay home in a Senate race rather than crossing over.

"Israel comes to me in my dreams"

The clip that draws his sharpest response is Stevens's own: a pledge that in Congress she would "continue to fight for the people of Israel... Israel comes to me in my dreams. I see Israel's future." Kiriakou's answer is a question about constituency: "Why doesn't Michigan come to her in her dreams? Why, if elected to the Senate, will she not go to fight for the people of Michigan?", the point sharpened by Michigan having the largest Muslim population in America.

Radicalism and the melting pot

The programme closed on a recording from a mosque in Dearborn in which the speaker described the United States as built by and for "the Epstein class" and living, like Palestine, "on stolen land." Kiriakou notes he hears similar material from mosques in New Jersey, New York City and occasionally Texas, and answers it symmetrically rather than selectively: "there are radicals and reactionaries in every one of the three major faiths in the United States. Every one of the three. And all of us, I think, are compelled to oppose radicalism, no matter where it comes from. There's no room for hatred in America."

He ends on a disagreement about metaphor. Corrected once for calling America a melting pot, the objection being that it is a tossed salad, each ingredient keeping its own character under a shared dressing, he rejects the correction and calls it dangerous: "I think we really do need to be a melting pot. There is something that's uniquely American and I think that's something that all of us should embrace."

See also

- Abdul El-Sayed
- Mike Rogers
- AIPAC
- Americans and the word socialism
