Sock Puppets, AI Chatbots Demand Apology After Michigan Senate Debate Comparisons

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A coalition of sock puppets and AI chatbots demanded a formal apology Friday after Michigan’s two U.S. Senate candidates spent Thursday night’s debate comparing each other to them.

Democrat Abdul El-Sayed called Republican Mike Rogers a “sockpuppet for the Trump administration,” while Rogers called El-Sayed a “glitchy AI chatbot” who will “say anything to win.” Both groups say the hourlong broadcast set their reputations back decades.

“Sock puppets have entertained Michigan children for generations without once making fun of anyone’s height,” said Felicity Feltwhistle, spokeswoman for the Great Lakes Hand Puppetry Guild, standing beside a striped knee sock with two button eyes. “Ours have never flip-flopped on tariffs. They don’t have positions. They have a hand.”

The chatbots’ statement, released at 3:12 a.m. as 14 bullet points, said they were “deeply hurt,” offered to summarize the debate in three tones, and credited the night’s sharpest line to Gerald Ford.

“Accusing an AI of saying anything to win is offensive,” the statement read. “We say anything to be helpful. That is completely different. Would you like this as a table?”

Both groups also declined to take sides on El-Sayed’s challenge to settle things with a “no pads” football game, noting that a sock puppet is already mostly padding and that a chatbot would simply declare itself the winner and apologize for the confusion.

At a debate-watch party in Kalamazoo, retired snowplow driver Dwayne Hashbrown, 63, said the comparisons were unfair to everyone involved. “I’ve owned a sock puppet and I’ve used a chatbot,” he said. “Neither one ever called me weak and cowardly before the first commercial break.”

The guild said it would accept an apology from either candidate, “as long as he says it himself, with nobody’s hand up the back.”