President Donald Trump embraced Islamophobic rhetoric Sunday as he rallied in Port Huron, Michigan, in support of the state’s Republican candidates, including the GOP Senate nominee, former Rep. Mike Rogers.
Trump alleged that Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee who is locked in a dead heat with Rogers, is a “jihadist,” calling him a “Muslim Brotherhood member” while saying Rogers is “apple pie.”
“Anyone with that record of support for jihadists would be screened and unable to get a seat on an airplane. They certainly should not give him a seat in the United States Senate,” Trump said about El-Sayed. “He would be the only senator that will have to go through a metal detector before he’s allowed to go into the Senate. I want him to have a metal detector.”
Trump went on to draw a comparison between the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and El-Sayed as he introduced speaker David Beamer, whose son, Todd Beamer, was a passenger who died on the hijacked United Flight 93.
“Twenty-five years later, Michigan needs to stand up and fight just like Todd did to stop a jihadist from walking into the Capitol,” Trump said.
Beamer went on to extend Trump’s comparison between the Senate race and 9/11.
“What has changed? Well, one thing is 9/11 was a surprise attack. What’s going on right now in our country and here in Michigan? It’s not a surprise. We can see the attack coming that culminates in this battleground state on Tuesday, November the 3rd,” Beamer said as Trump stood behind him onstage.
“What’s different this time is the enemy has not come from abroad. The enemy is right here among us, local terrorists, local citizens that want to demolish our country,” he added.
Beamer, who has been featured in Rogers’ campaign ads, compared the two men and claimed Rogers is “an American” while saying El-Sayed is not, going on to call him “anti-American.”
“Abdul has a birth certificate. The birth certificate says he’s a citizen of America. You know what? A birth certificate doesn’t make you an American,” Beamer said.
“He has blood that’s red. However, he has chosen to remove any strain of the white and blue part in his life. We cannot, cannot allow this man to invade and occupy our country,” he added.
Both Rogers and El-Sayed were born in Michigan.
El-Sayed’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s and Beamer’s remarks.
Trump has accused El-Sayed of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, an international Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt in 1928. The Trump administration has designated certain chapters of the group in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt as terrorist organizations. El-Sayed has repeatedly denied any ties to the group, which he has denounced.
El-Sayed went viral for a heated interaction last week with a town hall attendee who asked him to condemn the organization.
“You assume … that because I am Muslim, that somehow I would have some allegiance to something that is not our Constitution,” El-Sayed told the attendee last week.
Rogers was asked Sunday about Trump’s calling El-Sayed a “Muslim Brotherhood jihadist” and a “violent terrorist” in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Pressed about whether he agreed with Trump’s characterizations, Rogers said the election is about “me versus Abdul,” adding, “I’ve never called him a terrorist.”
Rogers has previously questioned El-Sayed about his mother, Fatten Elkomy, over her work decades ago at a charity the U.S. government later labeled a supporter of terrorist groups, leading to its closure. Elkomy was not accused of wrongdoing at the time.
Trump helped popularize a false conspiracy theory about former President Barack Obama, claiming he was not a U.S. citizen and demanding to see his birth certificate. He has since repurposed “birther” attacks against other political rivals, including former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who was born in South Carolina.
Trump on Sunday referred to Obama, who rallied in Detroit on Saturday on behalf of El-Sayed and other Michigan Democratic candidates.
“My competitor was here yesterday,” Trump, who is not running for office, said about Obama, who is also not running for office. “He didn’t have a crowd like this, I can tell you.”
