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President Donald Trump demanded that Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed go through metal detectors at the U.S. Capitol if he were to be elected in the November midterm elections.
“I’m here to stop a member of the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood from becoming a United States senator,” Trump said Sunday afternoon at a rally in Port Huron, Michigan, as he launched attacks on the Democrat. El-Sayed has vehemently denied any connection with the Islamist organization.
Trump said El-Sayed “should never be allowed into the halls of our great and beautiful Capitol building in Washington, D.C.,” adding that his supporters would elect his choice, Mike Rogers, a former Republican congressman, to the U.S. Senate.
The president then accused El-Sayed’s family of having ties to terrorism, without providing any evidence, and said: “Anyone with that much support for jihadists would be vetted and unable to get a seat on a plane. They certainly shouldn’t give him a seat in the United States Senate.”
“He would be the only senator who would have to go through a metal detector before being allowed into the Senate. I want him to have a metal detector,” Trump said. “If Abdul ascends to the Senate, he will have access to our country’s best-kept national security secrets, and his vote will wield power over our military, our borders, our homeland security and much more. »
El-Sayed disavowed the Muslim Brotherhood at a recent town hall in Caro, Michigan, after an attendee asked if he would do so.
“You ask the question because implicitly you assume that I will have dual loyalties,” El-Sayed told the participant. “You assume that somehow I won’t renege. Or that I will have a higher order of allegiance than to the Constitution.”
“I will take an oath to the Constitution of the United States. And this Constitution guarantees all of us the right to practice whatever faith we want or not to believe at all,” El-Sayed said.
The Senate race is tight, with El-Sayed leading Rogers 50 percent to 48 percent among likely Michigan voters in a new Marist poll.
As Trump holds daily rallies to boost Republican candidates’ chances of winning the November midterm elections, Democratic former President Barack Obama has hit the campaign trail. Obama was in Detroit on Saturday to support El-Sayed, where he told supporters: “Abdul is fighting for change, real change, change that will end this war.” »
Obama also denounced Trump’s unpopular war in Iran during a rally in Cleveland on Saturday in support of Democrat Amy Acton, who is running for Ohio governor against Republican Vivek Ramaswamy.
“Let’s think about this war in Iran. The initial logic was that we were going to go there and convince them to abandon their nuclear program, their nuclear weapons,” the former president said. “The problem was that Iran didn’t have nuclear weapons, because I had an agreement in place that everyone recognized – preventing them from getting nuclear weapons. And I didn’t have to fire a missile to do it; I just had to engage in diplomacy.”
Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015, a deal brokered by Obama that limited Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. During his first term, Trump withdrew from the deal, arguing that it “allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium and, over time, be on the brink of a nuclear breakthrough.”
Trump launched the war against Iran, alongside Israel, in late February, and it has been going on for almost eight months. With no end in sight and less than two weeks until the midterm elections, this could pose a problem for Republicans.
The president faces dismal approval ratings as Americans grapple with war-induced high gasoline prices and stubborn inflation that makes basic necessities more expensive.
According to a new CBS News/YouGov poll, 61% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s job as president, while only 39% approve.
Asked about specific issues, 67 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, while only 33 percent approve. Another 67 percent disapproved of the war in Iran, while 33 percent approved of it.
Eighty-three percent of registered voters said lowering the cost of living should be one of the top priorities of the next Congress, and 72 percent said ending the war in Iran should be another top concern, according to a recent Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll.
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