President Donald Trump told a rally in South Carolina on Thursday that Black voters who support Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed for the U.S. Senate are “crazy.” The Republican nominee in that race, former Rep. Mike Rogers, has spent months trying to win exactly those voters.
“If you’re Black or if you’re Jewish, and if you vote for Abdul, you’re crazy,” Trump said in Rock Hill, where he was campaigning for Sen. Darline Graham. Atlanta Black Star reported that he added, “You’re crazy anyway.” He also repeated a claim tying El-Sayed to the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed has denied it and disavowed the group.
The remark lands in a Michigan race where Black voters are not a side issue. El-Sayed won the August primary over Rep. Haley Stevens by about one percentage point, carried by Arab American, Muslim and young progressive voters. Stevens had strong support among Black voters and among Jewish voters who objected to El-Sayed’s criticism of Israel’s Gaza policy.
Some Democrats say that gap is why the contest looks tighter than it should. A prominent Black leader told CNN that “in a close race, even a sliver of doubt about Abdul could lead to defeat.” The Rev. Charles Williams II of Historic King Solomon Baptist Church in Detroit put the margin in his fingers: “It only takes this much of Detroit to defect. It only takes this much of Flint to defect.”
Rogers has gone after that opening. His campaign opened an office on Livernois Avenue in Detroit, and he has proposed housing construction, apprenticeships and action on food deserts in majority-Black cities, as well as literacy programs. Asked about the office, El-Sayed laughed and said Rogers “opened a cute little office in Detroit where he brought all his friends from the suburbs to come clap him in.” Some Black activists in the state have also faulted El-Sayed for supporting the “uncommitted” campaign in the 2024 Democratic presidential primary.
So Black voters in Michigan are being pitched by both campaigns, and on Thursday the president told them what he thinks of one choice. Former President Barack Obama and Vice President Kamala Harris have campaigned in the state to shore up Democratic support.
El-Sayed would be the first Muslim in the U.S. Senate. Michigan votes Tuesday, Nov. 3.
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