Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed answered President Trump’s latest jab with a dare of his own. He said he would gladly walk through a metal detector at the U.S. Capitol if the president agreed to take a lie detector test.
“I’ll go through a metal detector every day. You sit through a lie detector one time,” El-Sayed told supporters Thursday at a campaign rally in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
The progressive candidate said he already knew what he would ask. His first question would be about Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier the president once knew. His second would be whether Trump really won the 2020 election.
El-Sayed said he had nothing to hide and challenged the president to say the same.
White House spokesperson Lauren Bis pushed back on El-Sayed’s Epstein accusation in a statement Friday.
The back-and-forth started at a rally in Port Huron, Michigan, on Sunday, Oct. 25. There, Trump campaigned for Republican Senate nominee and former Rep. Mike Rogers and went after El-Sayed in some of his sharpest language of the campaign.
Trump called El-Sayed a “jihadist” and accused him of ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. He said that if El-Sayed wins, he would be the only senator required to pass through a metal detector before entering the Senate. Trump also invoked the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. He compared stopping El-Sayed to the passengers who fought back against the hijackers aboard United Flight 93.
The president also warned that if El-Sayed reached the Senate, he would have access to closely guarded national security secrets and a vote on the military, the border and homeland security.
There is no evidence that El-Sayed has any affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, and he has denied the accusations. Critics, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, have condemned Trump’s remarks as Islamophobic. El-Sayed would be the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate.
Rogers has repeated claims linking El-Sayed to the Muslim Brotherhood. At the Port Huron rally, he said the group had celebrated only one victory in America during this year’s primaries: El-Sayed’s. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” however, Rogers distanced himself from the president’s harshest language. Rogers said he has never called El-Sayed a terrorist. He described his opponent instead as a Democratic Socialists of America-aligned candidate with radical backers.
El-Sayed, a former Detroit health official, narrowly won his party’s nomination this summer over Rep. Haley Stevens. Since then, he has openly taunted Trump to come to Michigan. He has argued that a presidential visit would backfire on Rogers.
The race remains one of the tightest in the country. A recent Marist poll showed El-Sayed leading Rogers 50% to 48% among likely Michigan voters. The contest could help decide which party controls the Senate.
El-Sayed closed his Kalamazoo remarks by urging supporters to vote on Tuesday as if Trump himself were on the ballot.
