President Trump went full throttle on Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed at a Sunday rally in Port Huron, laying out what he called a damning record of family ties to radical Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood, and organizations connected to al-Qaeda. No teleprompter needed. Trump had receipts.
“I’m here to keep a jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member from becoming a United States Senator, and that’s the fact. We’re not going to let that happen,” Trump told the crowd, repeating it twice just to make sure everyone got the message. He called Republican opponent Mike Rogers “Apple Pie,” a nod to his American identity, and described El-Sayed as someone who “should never be allowed inside the halls of our great, beautiful Capitol building in Washington, D.C.
Trump didn’t stop at campaign trail rhetoric. He went straight into the family history, and Abdul El-Sayed terrorism ties makes for some genuinely uncomfortable reading for the Michigan Democrat’s campaign. According to Trump, El-Sayed’s mother “worked for an organization that gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.” The Washington Free Beacon has reported that the FBI raided their mother’s home in the early 2000s while she did work for a charity tied to al-Qaeda.
Trump also noted that El-Sayed’s sister-in-law, Mariam Jukaku, was placed on a federal terrorism watchlist, and only got off it, in Trump’s words, because “she had a good lawyer.” “She shouldn’t have been taken off,” Trump said flatly. Social media posts reportedly show El-Sayed’s half-sister expressing support for the Muslim Brotherhood, despite El-Sayed’s public claims that his family has no such ties.
Sayed’s father-in-law is the leader of a front group from the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization banned in eight Muslim countries because they are so sinister and severe that the Muslim countries don’t want ’em,” Trump told the crowd. He also said El-Sayed himself “signed a letter supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, urging them to quote purge the journalists and the police.” Trump’s reaction: “That’s bad.”
Then came the line of the night. “Anyone with that record of support for jihadists would be screened and unable to get a seat on an airplane,” Trump said. “They certainly should not give him a seat in the United States Senate. He would be the only senator that will have to go through a metal detector before he’s allowed to go into the Senate.” The crowd loved it, and honestly, it’s hard to argue with the logic.
Michigan voters head to the polls soon, and Trump is clearly betting that voters aren’t ready to send someone with this kind of family background to represent them in Washington. Republican Mike Rogers now has the full weight of a Trump rally behind him. El-Sayed, meanwhile, has some explaining to do, and “my lawyer handled it” probably won’t cut it on the campaign trail.
