Donald Trump claims he has ‘overwhelming support’ from Muslims in Michigan

• Days before the election, former President Donald Trump returned to Macomb County to rally supporters
• Trump stopped in a Lebanese-American business in Dearborn along the way, promising ‘peace in the Middle East’
• The rally was Trump’s second-to-last in Michigan. The ex-president will end with a Monday night rally in Grand Rapids

WARREN — Heading into the final weekend before the 2024 presidential election, former President Donald Trump returned Friday to give his second rally at Macomb Community College in just five weeks.

“You got to get the hell out and vote, because it's now or never,” Trump said, noting early voting ends Sunday.

The event was held during the workday, and attendance was markedly down from his previous events at the college. By the end of Trump’s nearly two hour-long address, a fair portion of the bleachers and seats in the college’s athletic hall were empty.

Dozens of attendees wore high-visibility vests, as Trump had earlier in the week, a riff on President Joe Biden’s apparent reference to Trump’s supporters as “garbage.” One attendee wore a trash bag.

Four days out from the election, more than a third of active registered voters in Michigan — 2.4 million — have already cast their ballots, either by mail or through early, in-person voting. The rallies held in the final few days of the election have been aimed squarely at boosting turnout among the slices of the electorate that may otherwise stay home on Election Day.

Polling continues to show Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris effectively tied in Michigan, though some aggregators offer a slight edge to Harris. 

Trump stops in Dearborn

On his way to Warren, Trump stopped in Dearborn for a visit at the Great Commoner Cafe, a business owned by a local Lebanese-American businessman, according to the Associated Press.

“We have a great feeling for Lebanon, and I know so many people from Lebanon, Lebanese people and the Muslim population, they're liking Trump, and I've had a good relationship with them,” Trump said at the cafe. “They are Dearborn, and we want their votes, and we're looking for their votes, and I think we'll get their votes.”

The AP reported the owner, Sam Abbas, had agreed to the visit after Trump issued a statement expressing a desire to “stop the suffering and destruction in Lebanon.”

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Trump’s campaign has spent months targeting Arab and Muslim Michiganders, who in recent elections have voted overwhelmingly Democratic. The conflict in the Middle East has the potential to swing votes Republican, amid criticism of Biden’s support of Israel and Harris’ unwillingness to take a stronger stance against what many Arab Muslims have labeled an unfolding genocide in the region.

They are one of a number of key groups that could help decide a close election in Michigan. 

Trump promised during the campaign stop to have “peace in the Middle East.” He has not offered any details to explain how he’d end the conflict or bring about peace, however.

At the rally in Warren, Trump asserted he had “overwhelming support” from the Muslim and Arab communities and exhorted Muslim Americans to “get the hell out and vote, please.” 

The last Republican presidential candidate to visit Dearborn was George W. Bush in 2000.

Trump doubled down on his recent attacks on Liz Cheney, a prominent Republican critic of Trump who has endorsed Harris, saying her father, Dick Cheney, who served as vice president under Bush, “virtually destroyed the Middle East.”

Harris “is the candidate of endless wars,” Trump asserted. “I am the candidate of peace.”

Harris “will continue working to bring the war in Gaza to an end in a way where Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends,” Nasrina Bargzie, the director of Muslim and Arab American outreach for the Harris campaign, responded in a statement.

Bargzie said Harris is also “working to address the suffering in Lebanon and bring about a diplomatic solution” to the war’s second front.

Trump stuck to the hits but flubbed some facts

Trump’s message has essentially remained consistent throughout his campaign and didn’t change significantly with a little more than three days before the election. 

At the rally in Warren, Trump railed against immigration, electric vehicles and the state of the economy, the core of his campaign message, while deriding Harris and Biden.

He called Harris a Marxist, “stupid,” “corrupt,” “low IQ” and other names. He referred to Chinese President Xi Jinping as “brilliant” for being able to “rule 1.4 billion people with an iron fist.”

He also had his signature improvisational moments, veering off script to comment on his reflection in the teleprompter screen.

“I'm studying my hair — looks not so good today. It's not a good hair day, but who cares? Not a good hair day for me,” he said. “I don’t wanna look.”

In criticizing Harris’ economic record, he inaccurately told the crowd, “we went from essentially no inflation, to the highest inflation in the history of our country.” 

Year-over-year inflation peaked during Biden’s term at about 9% in June 2022, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. But that pales in comparison to past bouts of inflations in the U.S., most recently in April 1980, when inflation reached 14.6%. Other economic shifts, such as in 1946, produced even higher inflation.

He also claimed that the lower-than-expected jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics this week — which showed only 12,000 new jobs in October — was historically poor.

“I never heard of 12,000 jobs. That's not even believable,” Trump said, claiming the report was “the worst jobs report in the history of our country, practically.”

But Trump actually had a worse jobs report while president, even excluding the pandemic, when tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs. In February 2019, 20,000 jobs were added to the economy, and the number was later revised to just 5,000 jobs.

The closing days of the campaign

Trump will close out his 2024 campaign with a rally in Grand Rapids Monday night, sources with Trump’s campaign indicated. Trump rallied in Grand Rapids the night before Election Day both in 2016 and 2020. 

Republicans are also performing better than in 2020 and 2022 in early voting, according to data from the firm TargetSmart. But it remains to be seen whether that success in shifting toward other voting methods is attracting new supporters, or Trump’s base that would’ve already turned out for the election.

Kamala Harris will next be in Michigan Sunday for a pre-Election Day swing that will take her from a church service in Detroit that morning to an evening rally on Michigan State University’s campus.