Trump escalates Islamophobic attacks on Democratic candidates
At Kansas rally, President Trump mocked Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed's name and repeated an unsupported claim tying him to Muslim Brotherhood, while also invoking Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib
WICHITA, Kansas (MNTV) – President Donald Trump used a Kansas campaign rally to sharpen his attacks on Muslim American politicians, mocking the name of Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and reviving an unsupported allegation that El-Sayed and his sister belong to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Speaking Monday night in support of Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, Trump told the crowd that Democrats were “the party of Abdul Mohammad El-Sayed,” emphasizing the name and boasting that he had taken to calling the candidate “Mohammed.”
“I’m the president, I can call him whatever the hell I want,” Trump said, adding that calling anyone from “that part of the world” Mohammed gave a person “a 65% chance” of getting the name right. He also invoked former President Barack Obama’s middle name. Obama is campaigning for El-Sayed, who would become the first Muslim U.S. senator if elected.
Trump went on to claim that El-Sayed and his sister were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a political and religious movement founded in Egypt in 1928, an allegation he offered no evidence to support but has repeated in recent weeks.
His administration has moved to designate certain chapters of the organization as foreign terrorist groups.
El-Sayed has previously answered the mockery by pointing to Trump’s dealings with Muslim-majority states, writing on social media that the president could pronounce his name correctly “when he wants a jet from Qatar or money from Saudi Arabia” for his son-in-law’s investment firm.
Though campaigning in Kansas, Trump repeatedly turned to Omar of Minnesota and Tlaib of Michigan, two of the three Muslims in the current Congress, whose districts lie far from the state.
Civil-rights advocates say the pattern casts Muslim Americans as outsiders whose loyalty is open to question in a way not demanded of other candidates.
Marshall faces an unexpectedly competitive challenge from Adam Hamilton, a Methodist pastor whose campaign has drawn support in the Kansas City suburbs; the state has not elected a Democratic senator since 1932.
Trump attacked Hamilton as a “pervert” and said he “openly mocks Jesus,” citing the pastor’s positions on transgender issues and allegations Hamilton has disputed about a church camp volunteer two decades ago.
Hamilton’s campaign said the attacks were meant to distract from fuel prices, health-care costs and “Washington corruption.”
Trump also pointed to recent unrest in France, blaming migrants and what he called “jihadists” for violence there — a characterization at odds with French reporting that the protests grew out of anger over living costs.
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