Trump Rallies in Port Huron Sunday as Obama Defends El-Sayed in Detroit

President Donald Trump will rally Republicans in eastern Michigan on Sunday, a day after former President Barack Obama campaigned for Democrats in the state, underscoring its importance in next week's midterm elections, Reuters reported. Michigan has one of the nation's most competitive Senate contests — an open-seat race between former Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican, and Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed that will help decide control of the chamber — and despite repeatedly attacking El-Sayed from the Oval Office and at rallies across the country, Trump had not yet campaigned in Michigan this year.

If he wins, El-Sayed would be the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate. Trump has sought to paint El-Sayed as a Muslim extremist and has repeatedly mocked his middle name, Mohamed, and Rogers has alleged without evidence that El-Sayed has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. On NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Rogers said El-Sayed had not sufficiently responded to questions about those allegations: "He's a Democrat Socialist of America-aligned candidate who has these pretty radical support groups that don't like America," he said. El-Sayed has denied any affiliation with the group, saying it is "shameful" for Rogers to question his allegiance to the United States, and defended his religion in a recent advertisement: "Faith is a thing there's just too little of in Washington."

At Saturday's rally in Detroit, Obama framed the attacks on El-Sayed as an attempt by opponents to make him look "less patriotic and less American than they are," and compared it to his own experience as the target of false claims that he was born in Kenya. "We have seen this movie before," Obama said. "I starred in it … This stuff didn't work on me. Not in Michigan. It's not going to work on Abdul." Hours after the Detroit event, Trump dismissed Obama's efforts on behalf of El-Sayed in an early Sunday post on Truth Social, writing that Obama was campaigning for a candidate he attacked in the same terms and that El-Sayed is "going to lose, also," Reuters reported.

Trump's rally in Port Huron, part of an area of Michigan he won in the 2024 presidential election with more than 66 percent of the vote, will also highlight the U.S.-Canada tariff standoff, which has affected the Detroit-based auto industry and prompted Rogers to distance himself from the president's policy. Rogers on Sunday hailed Trump's tariffs for securing manufacturing investments for Michigan by Chevrolet and Detroit Diesel, but said "the automobile portion of these Canadian tariffs worries me a little bit," adding: "There's some good and there's some things we have to work on." In a Fox News interview ahead of Sunday's rally, Trump praised Rogers as someone who shares Michigan voters' beliefs: "He's going to be an amazing senator," Trump told the "Sunday Briefing" program. "Solid as a rock. Apple pie." Democrats need a net gain of four seats in both the Senate and the House to overturn Republicans' narrow 53-47 and 218-214 majorities.