US president likens Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to 9\/11 hijackers at Michigan campaign rally
\nWashington
\nPresident Donald Trump at a Sunday campaign rally ratcheted up his push to link US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to extremists, comparing him to the 9\/11 attackers while saying Democrats would let violent anti-American terrorists into the United States.
\n\u201cI\u2019m here to keep an extremist, Muslim Brotherhood member from becoming a United States senator,\u201d Trump told a receptive audience in Port Huron, Michigan.
\nIf he wins, El-Sayed would be the first Muslim elected to the US Senate. Trump has sought to paint him as an anti-American 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.
\nMichigan has one of the nation\u2019s 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.
\nThe 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.
\n\u201cTwenty-five years later, Michigan needs to stand up and fight, just like Todd did, to stop an extremist from walking into the Capitol,\u201d Trump said.
\nIf El-Sayed wins, \u201che would be the only senator that will have to go through a metal detector before he\u2019s allowed to go in the Senate,\u201d Trump said.
\nEl-Sayed says questioning his loyalty is \u2018shameful\u2019
\nEl-Sayed has dismissed the accusations against him and, in a recent advertisement, defended his religion, saying, \u201cFaith is a thing there\u2019s just too little of in Washington.\u201d
\nRogers has alleged without evidence that El-Sayed has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the Arab world\u2019s oldest and most influential groups.
\nEl-Sayed has denied affiliation with the group, saying it is \u201cshameful\u201d for Rogers to question his allegiance to the United States.
\nRogers said in an interview on NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press\u201d on Sunday, before the Port Huron rally, that El-Sayed had not sufficiently responded to questions about the allegations.
\n\u201cHe\u2019s a Democrat Socialist of America-aligned candidate who has these pretty radical support groups that don\u2019t like America,\u201d he said.
\nTrump\u2019s 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\u2019s elections.
\nAt Saturday\u2019s rally in Detroit, Obama framed the attacks by El-Sayed\u2019s opponents as an attempt to make him look \u201cless patriotic and less American than they are.\u201d
\nThe former president compared them to his experience as the target of false claims that he was born in Kenya.
\n\u201cWe have seen this movie before,\u201d Obama said. \u201cI starred in it \u2026 This stuff didn\u2019t work on me. Not in Michigan. It\u2019s not going to work on Abdul.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manufacturing investments
\nPort Huron is part of an area of Michigan that Trump won in the 2024 presidential election with more than 66% of the vote.
\nOne issue in focus during the campaign in the state has been the US-Canada tariff standoff, which has affected the Detroit-based US auto industry and prompted Rogers to distance himself from the president\u2019s policy.
\nRogers on Sunday hailed Trump\u2019s tariffs for securing manufacturing investments for Michigan by Chevrolet and Detroit Diesel, but said \u201cThe automobile portion of these Canadian tariffs worries me a little bit.\u201d
\n\u201cThere\u2019s some good, and there\u2019s some things we have to work on,\u201d he told \u201cMeet the Press.\u201d
\nIn a Fox News interview ahead of Sunday\u2019s rally, Trump praised Rogers as someone who shares Michigan voters\u2019 beliefs.
\n\u201cHe\u2019s going to be an amazing senator,\u201d Trump told the \u201cSunday Briefing\u201d program. \u201cSolid as a rock. Apple pie.\u201d
\nDemocrats need to gain just a handful of seats each in the US Senate and House of Representatives to overturn Republicans\u2019 narrow 53-47 and 218-214 majorities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US president likens Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to 9\/11 hijackers at Michigan campaign rally Washington President Donald Trump at a Sunday campaign rally ratcheted up his push to link US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to extremists, comparing him to the 9\/11 attackers while saying Democrats would let violent anti-American terrorists into the United States. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":104922,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104959,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104947\/revisions\/104959"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}