Trump courts Arab and Muslim support, with Harris criticized for 'not engaging'

Former President Trump and his surrogates in the Arab and Muslim communitiesare doubling down on their efforts to win over the traditionally Democratic constituency amid widespread anger over the Israel-Gaza conflict.

Polls over the last month have shown that Trump holds a lead among this demographic voting bloc, erasing the traditional 2-to-1 Democratic advantage. That could have a particularly significant impact in the swing state of Michigan, home to hundreds of thousands of Muslim voters and Arab voters. President Biden won the state by close to 150,000 votes. 

On Friday, Trump became the first major party nominee to visit Dearborn, Mich., which is majority Arab, building on his momentum in the community. 

“It helps when Trump has his family camped out in Dearborn campaigning for votes and Trump himself keeps crashing events,” said Jim Zogby, the founding director of the Arab American Institute and a former adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). 

Trump’s efforts come as surrogates for Vice President Harris say she hasn’t made enough of an effort to personally engage with those voters.

“You can’t just say at one rally that you welcome Arab voters and then not make any effort to engage with them or follow through,” Zogby said. “That doesn't send the same message as having the father-in-law of your daughter practically camped out with the community, and having one of your top foreign policy advisers there meeting with people and preparing the ground for him to come to town.” 

Trump has put Massad Boulos, a Lebanese American businessman and Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law, in charge of Arab and Muslim outreach alongside Richard Grinnell, Trump’s former director of national intelligence, who has been floated as a potential secretary of State. 

Boulous’s campaigning has paid off in Michigan. Trump has won the endorsements of Dearborn Heights Mayor Bill Bazzi (D), Hamtrack Mayor Amer Ghalib (D), and a group of notable imams and other religious leaders in the state. Dearborn’s mayor, a Democrat, has announced that he will not endorse either candidate. 

"Trump has capitalized on Muslim voters being ignored by Democrats and by the Harris campaign,” said Nazita Lajevardi, an associate political science professor at Michigan State University. “He's been endorsed by some mayors and imams from Michigan, which is representative of the fact that Democrats have done absolutely nothing to not even discuss Gaza, but even acknowledge the severity of what is happening in Gaza … I mean, there's just almost an insane pact among Democrats to just not give voice to it. 

“It's unfortunate that the Harris campaign could not be more sincere in their engagement with Muslim electorate,” she added. 

Wa’el Alzayat, the CEO of Emgage, which is the nation’s largest Muslim advocacy group and has endorsed Harris, dismissed the endorsements of Trump, saying that the leaders “do not represent the majority of Muslims.” Emgage has endorsed Harris.

Alzayat also pointed to meetings in recent weeks between Harris campaign leaders and advisers, including her senior national security adviser, Phil Gordon, in recent weeks and Arab and Muslim leaders as evidence of the campaign’s outreach with voters. Harris also met with Muslim and Arab leaders in early October in Flint. 

“They have been engaging a lot in Michigan with community leaders,” Alzayat said. “She has relied also Attorney General Keith Ellison for engagement with the Muslim community, including in Michigan … There's, there's been 10s and 10s of other engagements behind the scene with various campaign and policy officials.” 

Another Democrat on the ground, Ismael Ahmed, who served in the state’s cabinet and as a state party vice chair, also criticized the Harris campaign for making “tactical” decisions, including not inviting a Palestinian to speak at the DNC. 

“I think they could have done more in the community…they are doing a lot, but they can do more,” Ahmed said. “The decision not to have a Palestinian speak at the Democratic convention was a really bad decision, and there have been other decisions that were made that were tactical but undermined their ability to bring our community together.” 

Democrats also criticized the campaign’s decision to bring Rep. Ritchie Torres and former President Bill Clinton to campaign in Michigan. In the last year, Torres has made a name for himself by criticizing pro-Palestinian activists. During a campaign event on WednesdayOct.30, Clinton defended Israel's killing of civilians, saying Hamas has been using them as human shields. 

Robert S. McCaw, director of the Center for American Islamic Relations Government Affairs, Director Robert. S. McCaw slammed Clinton’s remarks in a written statement, calling them “callous and dishonest,” and said that it was “unacceptable to dismissively reference Islam and falsely claim that every Palestinian man, woman and child killed by Israel was a human shield.” 

Alzayat agreed. 

“I say this as the head of an organization that endorsed Harris…we find Ritchie Torres offensive and not becoming of the Democratic Party and we have a serious problem with people like him and you know, that's something that needs to be addressed after the election,” Alzayat said. “And, I also think Bill Clinton needs to just stay in retirement because he’s really not helping the cause with these statements…he’s just out of touch.”  

On the Republican side, Boulos and Trump have capitalized on these divisions to push their message. 

According to Boulous, he first approached Trump about winning support in the community earlier this year, and he has worked with the campaign to target both Muslim and Christian Arab voters. 

“Arab Christians are not talked about a lot, but the majority of Middle Easterners in the United States are Christians, not Muslims, close to 70 percent, but most people don't look at it from that point of view,” Boulos told The Hill. “We've done a lot of work with that community as well, especially the Caldean community in Michigan, which is about 200,000, and the Lebanese Christian…so we've been doing a lot of outreach and the president has been posting in recent days about some of these communities.” 

Trump also recently wrote a letter to the Lebanese American community asking for its support, and he has also made posts calling on other Arab Christian groups to cast their ballots for him. Earlier this month, Trump also sat down for an interview with Al Arabiya, the largest Arab news network in the U.S., and also sat with the largest Lebanese TV station for an interview. 

In its outreach to the community, his campaign has focused both on the conflict in Gaza and on conservative social values, since many older Muslims skew socially conservative. 

The outreach has had some success with a group of imams, including Husham Al-Husainy, an Iraqi sheik who leads the Karbaala Education Center in Dearborn. 

“I am supporting Donald Trump because he opposes gay marriage and he is the most Christian person in the election,” Al-Husainy said. “He will return us to conservative values, and I am a Muslim and I will stand with whoever opposes gay marriage.” 

Trump has not explicitly said he supports a federal ban on gay marriage, which has been a constitutional right since 2014 and which Congress statutorily protected in 2022. 

According to Samraa Luqman, a progressive activist who wrote in Sen. Bernie Sanders's (I-Vt.) name in the 2020 presidential election but is now backing Trump, told The Hill that Trump’s appeals to conservative values have begun to move the needle for older, more conservative voters in the community.

Trump and Boulos have also made repeated claims that they will “solve the Middle East crisis.” which Democrats have questioned, saying they are not “genuine.” 

Boulos did not provide any additional information about potential Trump peace plans in Gaza, saying Trump “was not in office, so it was not appropriate to share plans.”