President Donald Trump disparaged Jewish voters who support Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan\u2019s Democratic Senate nominee, at a rally in Port Huron on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny Jewish person that supports this guy should be ashamed of themselves,\u201d Trump told<\/a> some 4,000 supporters in the city north of Detroit, where he stumped for Republican nominee Mike Rogers. \u201cYou should never speak to them again.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Hundreds of Michigan Jews have pledged<\/a> to vote for El-Sayed, who polls<\/a> indicate is narrowly leading Rogers in a race key to determining control of the Senate. Another subset of Jews has pressured<\/a> El-Sayed, a staunch critic of Israel, to defend \u201cJewish safety \u2014 including for Zionist Jews\u201d and \u201cJewish sovereignty in Israel.\u201d Still others have urged<\/a> their community members to reject El-Sayed outright and back Rogers.<\/p>\n El-Sayed opposes U.S. military aid to Israel, saying the country has committed genocide in Gaza and is \u201cnot an ally.\u201d<\/a> Those positions divided the Democratic party during his primary campaign against pro-Israel U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, whom he narrowly bested in August. A former public health official, El-Sayed has also emphasized affordability in healthcare, housing and education. He has made a concentrated push to reach undecided Jewish voters in the homestretch before the Nov. 3 midterm election, hiring<\/a> a Jewish outreach director last week.<\/p>\n Trump has in the past accused<\/a> Jews who vote for Democrats of being \u201cdisloyal to Jewish people\u201d and \u201cdisloyal to Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n He said at the Port Huron rally that he is \u201cpolling at 99% in Israel,\u201d which will hold national elections on Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump did not cite evidence for the claim, which is unsupported by publicly available surveys. While he has historically scored high popularity among Israelis, a poll by the Jewish People Policy Institute<\/a> in June found the Israeli public\u2019s trust in him was declining. The poll said that 12% of Israelis reported having a great deal of trust in Trump, down from 21% in May, while the share of Israelis with complete distrust in him rose from 32% to 37%.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump joined his comments about Jews and Israel to anti-Muslim rhetoric about El-Sayed, who would become the first Muslim in the Senate if he is elected.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump called El-Sayed a \u201cjihadist Muslim Brotherhood member\u201d who was \u201con the side of the terrorists,\u201d adding that he would \u201chave to go through a metal detector before he\u2019s allowed to go into the Senate.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He threatened that \u201cif Abdul and the Democrats win, they will open the floodgates and invite hordes of jihadists to our shores, creating a nightmare of violence and terror until you cannot even have a Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump claimed that El-Sayed\u2019s half sister, Eman Abdelhadi, celebrated the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. On the first anniversary of the attack, Abdelhadi posted a video that said, \u201cno matter how great the brutality, the oppression, the intensity of what we\u2019re going through, the horizon of justice is just around the corner,\u201d according to The New York Times<\/a>. She did not directly mention or celebrate the violence.\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump also said that El-Sayed\u2019s mother had \u201cworked for an organization that gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.\u201d A Times investigation<\/a> reported that El-Sayed\u2019s mother worked as a nurse in Missouri for a Muslim aid group that was later designated by the U.S. government as a supporter of terrorist groups. She was never accused of wrongdoing.<\/p>\n