President Donald Trump has a new bogeyman — and as the president might say, he’s right out of central casting.
Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan’s divisive Democratic Senate primary last week enables Trump and Republicans to juice the base – he supports policies embraced by self-described socialists such as Medicare for All, opposes U.S. military aid for Israel and thinks ICE should be abolished. El-Sayed says he is not a socialist.
Republicans are already accusing El-Sayed, who is Muslim, of being “anti-American,” pointing to his relationship with far-left Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who has a history of controversial statements, including about Israel and the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The president alsoused El-Sayed’s full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, this week in a statement warning that Democrats will eliminate the filibuster if they control the Senate, echoing the way he uses Barack Obama’s middle name, Hussein, as a way to question his legitimacy his American birth.
“Abdul El-Sayed, lovely gentleman, he’s a man of hate,” Trump said during a Las Vegas event on Wednesday. “And now he’s going around saying, “No, I love everybody. He doesn’t love everybody. Put him in office, you’re going to find out what he loves.”
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