Trump labels Michigan Senate candidate El-Sayed a 'terrorist sympathizer' and blames Somali Americans

Trump's posts on El-Sayed

President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social late on Wednesday, calling Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for US Senate from Michigan, a 'RADICAL Extremist' and a 'Terrorist Sympathizer' while offering support for the Republican candidate, Mike Rogers. In the same message he called the candidate Mohammed, a first name El-Sayed does not use, and said he dates back to the days of Jihad. Trump offered no evidence for the terrorist sympathizer label. The post included the following line about the Democrat.

Mohammed El-Sayed is a terrible candidate for the Democrats.

The post said Rogers is a great candidate and gave him his 'COMPLETE AND TOTAL ENDORSEMENT'. Trump also claimed that El-Sayed and his family have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda, and he called the candidate the 'best friend' of Hasan Piker, a left-wing streamer accused of antisemitism. El-Sayed, a physician and former health director for Wayne County, won the August Democratic primary by defeating Representative Haley Stevens in a close contest.

El-Sayed's response

El-Sayed answered at a campaign event in Grand Rapids on Thursday. He joked about the way Trump pronounced his name and insisted on the first name Abdul.

My name is Abdul, and he knows it.

He said Trump refuses to use the name because El-Sayed keeps putting him on the spot. He accused the president of using his name and his religion to distract attention from the suffering his policies inflict on the population. El-Sayed also said that in November voters would teach people to say his name correctly, preceded by the title of senator. Democrats said Trump's rhetoric sought to distract voters from the impact of his policies heading into the November midterm elections.

Somali Americans and Minnesota

On Thursday, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Minnesota was under threat from the Somali community. He urged authorities in Minnesota to ask for federal intervention in the state.

The once Great State of Minnesota is being taken over by Somali Immigrants. There is Violence, Murder, and Mayhem all over the State. The people of Minnesota must fight back.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison responded that Somali Minnesotans are neighbors and part of the state, and that the bigotry in Trump's post was far from the Minnesota he knows and loves. Trump has repeatedly invoked a 2020 scandal in which scores of people were accused of defrauding millions of dollars from a state-run, federally funded child nutrition program, and many defendants were Somali Americans. In May, Aimee Bock, who led the Minnesota non-profit involved and is not a Somali immigrant, was sentenced to 41 years in prison after being convicted last year as the ringleader. Rights groups accused Trump of using isolated fraud cases as an excuse to target immigrant communities, citing his pardons of people with fraud convictions. The president has also used the case to justify an aggressive surge in arrests and deportations of immigrants in Minnesota earlier this year and moves to restrict Medicare and childcare programs in the Democratic-led state.

Fox News and the El-Sayed campaign

White House officials contacted Fox on Tuesday to complain about anchor Martha MacCallum's interview with El-Sayed, which was held on Monday. Trump blasted the interview as 'softball' and wrote that Fox is promoting the Democrats. Republicans worry that Fox is undercutting their effort to brand El-Sayed as a liberal far outside the mainstream. From 1 to 6 October, El-Sayed campaign ads aired 129 times on Fox News, roughly twice as often as on ESPN, according to ad-tracking data.

In early August, senior GOP operatives warned Fox producers and executives that host Jesse Watters could help El-Sayed cast himself as moderate. After El-Sayed's primary win, Watters said that 'You gotta respect Abdul because he beat the [Democratic] machine.' Fox said Watters' August interview with El-Sayed drew nearly 3.4 million viewers, the highest-rated cable news primetime telecast of the month. Michigan-based GOP strategist Dennis Lennox said that 'he is on Fox every commercial break.' Polls show El-Sayed in a tight race against former Representative Mike Rogers. In the MacCallum interview, El-Sayed said that 'I am going to have conversations with all kinds of folks.'