By Bo Erickson
PORT HURON, Michigan Oct 25 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump at a Sunday campaign rally ratcheted up his push to link US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to Muslim extremists, comparing him to the 9/11 attackers while saying Democrats would let violent anti-American terrorists into the United States.
“I’m here to keep a jihadist, Muslim Brotherhood member from becoming a United States senator,” the president told a receptive audience in Port Huron, which is in a Michigan area where 66% of the vote went to Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
If El-Sayed wins, he would be the first Muslim elected to the US Senate. Trump has sought to paint him as an anti-American Muslim radical, and on Sunday he took the rhetoric to a new level, likening El-Sayed to the attackers who took over United Flight 93 during the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Michigan has one of the nation’s most competitive US Senate contests going into the November 3 midterm elections, with former US Representative Mike Rogers, a Republican, and El-Sayed vying for an open seat that will help to decide control of the chamber.
The president on Sunday compared voting against El-Sayed to the actions of Michigan native Todd Beamer and others who fought back against the Flight 93 hijackers.
“Twenty-five years later, Michigan needs to stand up and fight, just like Todd did, to stop a jihadist from walking into the Capitol,” said Trump.
If El-Sayed wins, “he would be the only senator that will have to go through a metal detector before he’s allowed to go in the Senate,” Trump said.
El-Sayed has dismissed the accusations against him, and at a Sunday night event, he suggested that Trump’s frequent emphasis of El-Sayed’s name contains a measure of hypocrisy.
“I get that the president of the United States takes personal offense to my first name,” El-Sayed told an audience in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “He doesn’t mind as much when it’s a shared name from the Saudis who are funding his son-in-law’s private equity, doesn’t seem to mind as much when it’s the Qataris who are giving him a $400 million private jet.”
Affinity Partners, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s investment fund, has reportedly received billions from a Saudi Government entity. Qatar gifted Trump a Boeing 747 jet.
EL-SAYED SAYS QUESTIONING HIS LOYALTY IS ‘SHAMEFUL’
The mostly White crowd at Sunday’s rally cheered Trump’s comments on El-Sayed. Some attendees yelled “traitor” and others yelled “deport,” although El-Sayed was born in Michigan.
Terrance Camburn, a 52-year-old disabled Army veteran from Sandusky, Michigan, said he supported Trump’s criticism because of El-Sayed’s “political beliefs.”
“I’ve been down to Dearborn and I’ve seen many of the things he agrees with,” Camburn said when asked about Trump’s 9/11 comments.
Dearborn, Michigan, has the highest per-capita concentration of Muslims of any US city.
As he left the venue after the rally, Rogers did not respond to Reuters’ questions about Trump’s invocation of 9/11. But earlier on Sunday, he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he did not agree with the notion that El-Sayed is a violent terrorist.
“I’ve never called him a terrorist,” Rogers told NBC.
Rogers has alleged without evidence that El-Sayed has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist groups.
El-Sayed has denied affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, saying it is “shameful” for Rogers to question his allegiance to the United States.
Rogers told “Meet the Press” that El-Sayed had not sufficiently responded to questions about the allegations.
“He’s a Democrat Socialist of America-aligned candidate who has these pretty radical support groups that don’t like America,” he said.
Trump’s speech in eastern Michigan on Sunday came a day after former President Barack Obama campaigned for Democrats in the state, underscoring its importance in next week’s elections.
At a Saturday rally in Detroit, Obama framed the attacks by El-Sayed’s opponents as an attempt to make him look “less American than they are.”
The former president compared them to his own experience as the target of false claims that he was born in Kenya. “This stuff didn’t work on me,” Obama said. “Not in Michigan. It’s not going to work on Abdul.”
Democrats need to gain just a handful of seats each in the US Senate and House of Representatives to overturn Republicans’ narrow 53-47 and 218-214 majorities.
(Reporting by Bo Erickson, additional reporting by Alexandra Alper in Washington and Karl Plume in Chicago; Editing by Ross Colvin, Rod Nickel, William Mallard, Sergio Non, Edmund Klamann and Lincoln Feast.)
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