Campaigning in Florida on Friday night, President Trump turned to Michigan's Senate race and told his Daytona Beach crowd that he hopes Michigan sends its Democratic nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, back to where he came from — urging them instead to put the Republican, Mike Rogers, in the Senate. El-Sayed was born and raised in Michigan, the son of Egyptian immigrants.
The line came as the President was honouring his longtime "Blacks for Trump" supporters. His argument to them was direct: that Abdul is not a big fan of Jewish people, and not a big fan of Black people either — and that the answer is to elect Rogers. He closed the moment by thanking the group: "We love you." It is the same case the President has made throughout the closing stretch — that this election is about who will stand with his agenda in the Senate, and that El-Sayed, a progressive who won his party's nomination against the establishment's candidate, is outside it.
El-Sayed's standing answer to the President is a challenge of his own. Since the row over his Kalamazoo speech — where he said communities should prepare to fight ICE with the Second Amendment, and the President floated prosecuting him — El-Sayed has been daring Trump to sit for a lie detector test. His argument: America has metal detectors to keep people safe from guns; the President should face a lie detector to keep people safe from his mouth. And he has named the first question he would ask: "Epstein." The rally line and the lie-detector challenge are now the two poles of the race's final weekend.
The Michigan seat is open and rated a toss-up, and it could help decide who controls the Senate on Tuesday. For Michigan voters, the exchange distils the closing argument into one question: the President says the race is about loyalty and who belongs in his Senate; El-Sayed says it should be about whether the President himself can pass a test of honesty. Tuesday will show which argument the state believed.
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