Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Michigan, used his Kalamazoo rally on Thursday night to answer President Trump's metal-detector jab with a challenge of his own: "Here's the deal, Donald. Listen. I'll go through a metal detector if you'll sit for a lie detector. Simple. I got nothing to hide. You've got so much to hide. My first question. Epstein. Second question, did you win the 2020 election?"
The line he was answering came four days earlier, in Port Huron, Michigan, where Trump told a crowd that El-Sayed "would be the only senator that will have to go through a metal detector before he's allowed to go into the Senate," adding: "Anyone with that record of support for jihadists would be screened and unable to get a seat on an airplane. They certainly should not give him a seat in the United States Senate." Trump also urged Michigan to "keep a Jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member from becoming a United States senator." Bridge Michigan reported it found no evidence for the Muslim Brotherhood charge, and El-Sayed has disavowed the group when asked.
At Miller Auditorium at Western Michigan University, where Senator Elissa Slotkin spoke before him, El-Sayed closed the exchange on his terms: "I'll go through a metal detector every day. You sit through a lie detector one time. That's the deal." The clip has been spreading since Thursday night through C-SPAN's and news accounts' posts of the rally. Neither Trump nor El-Sayed's Republican opponent had publicly answered the lie-detector challenge in the reporting through Friday.
The seat is an open one — Senator Gary Peters is retiring — and it is among the most closely watched in the country. El-Sayed, a physician who ran Detroit's health department and later Wayne County's, won the August 4 Democratic primary over Representative Haley Stevens, 48.5 to 47.6 percent, and would be the first Muslim U.S. senator. He faces Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee backed by Trump, on November 3. The race is rated a toss-up: one recent poll (Marist) had El-Sayed ahead 50–48, another (Mitchell/CBS Detroit) had Rogers ahead 51–44.
For Michigan voters, the exchange is the race in miniature: a Senate seat that could help decide control of the chamber is being fought, in its final days, through the president himself — his attacks supplying the Democrat's biggest viral moments, and the Democrat answering by putting Trump's own honesty, on Epstein and on 2020, at the center of his closing argument. Tuesday's voters get the last word.
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