Trump’s attacks on El-Sayed rest on falsehoods and guilt by association
At Dallas rally, president tied Muslim Senate candidate to his relatives and allies, with claims that collapse under scrutiny
WASHINGTON (MNTV) — President Donald Trump has escalated his attacks on Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat, with a series of claims that range from demonstrably false to reliant on guilt by association.
Speaking for nearly two hours at a Republican midterm convention in Dallas on Sept. 9, Trump portrayed El-Sayed — a Michigan-born father and husband — as a politician who “hates family households” and wants to “destroy the American way of life,” characterizations unsupported by anything in his record.
Trump claimed El-Sayed wants to “pack” the Supreme Court with 23 “far-left lunatic justices”; in fact El-Sayed has discussed term limits for justices, not expanding the nine-member court to 23, a figure with no basis.
The sharpest attacks invoked El-Sayed’s relatives. Trump claimed his sister “celebrated the terrorist slaughter of babies” on Oct. 7, 2023 — a reference to his half-sister, academic Eman Abdelhadi, whose pro-Palestinian Instagram post, reporting cited by Fox News found, did not mention or celebrate the Hamas attack, and does not represent El-Sayed’s views.
Trump also said El-Sayed’s birth mother “worked for an organization that gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to people that follow Osama bin Laden” — the Islamic American Relief Agency, U.S.-sanctioned in 2004, which later pleaded guilty to funneling money to Iraq.
But she was never charged with wrongdoing, and El-Sayed — whose parents divorced when he was young and who was raised mainly by his father and stepmother — had no connection to her work.
Trump further attacked El-Sayed over left-wing streamer Hasan Piker’s remark that America “deserved 9/11,” though Piker disavowed it and El-Sayed himself called it “dumb.”
The pattern is revealing: rather than engage El-Sayed’s policies, Trump built a case from distorted claims, inflammatory language, and the views of relatives and associates — casting a Muslim candidate not as an opponent but as a threat to the nation’s identity.
El-Sayed, who beat former Representative Haley Stevens in the Aug. 4 primary, faces Republican Mike Rogers, whom Trump urged Michigan voters to back.
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