A Muslim mayor of a city in the battleground state of Michigan has endorsed former President Donald Trump despite Trump's past Islamophobic comments.
Amer Ghalib is the mayor of Hamtramck, Michigan, the city which became the first in America to elect an all-Muslim City Council and a Muslim mayor in 2021. He immigrated to the United States from Yemen when he was just 17.
Ghalib took to Facebook on Sunday to voice his support for the Republican presidential ticket in a post that was shared by the former President on his own social media app, Truth Social.
"President Trump and I may not agree on everything, but I know he is a man of principles." wrote Ghalib. "Though it's looking good, he may or may not win the election and be the 47th president of the United States, but I believe he is the right choice for this critical time."
Recent polls show that Vice President Kamala Harris has gained a 5-point lead over former President Donald Trump amongst registered voters across the nation. In Michigan, polls from Sept. 19 demonstrate a 3.2-point lead in favor of Harris amongst voters in the state.
The former President has a demonstrably prolific history of perpetuating Islamophobia. In 2016, Trump told CNN's Anderson Cooper, "I think Islam hates us," just months after making headlines for calling for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on," as stated in a campaign press release. These statements are amongst many iterations of Islamophobia that have been demonstrated by Trump, including repeatedly falsely claiming to see Muslims in New Jersey cheering during the Sept. 11 attacks.
Trump, who proposed to ban Muslims from the country during his campaign, claims "we're standing up for persecuted Christians and religious minorities all around the world." pic.twitter.com/iKecukWk1q
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 6, 2020
Beginning in 2016, Trump has repeatedly told this Islamophobic and very fake story about 49 Muslims being killed pic.twitter.com/KrEGUN16AY
— NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) March 18, 2019
“I think Islam hates us,” Trump told Anderson Cooper in March 2016 during the US presidential campaign pic.twitter.com/FJ0NdePpM4
— Mohamad Bazzi (@BazziNYU) March 15, 2019
The endorsement from Ghalib comes less than a week after he met the former President at a town hall meeting in the city of Flint, Michigan. Trump has also expressed gratitude and appreciation towards Ghalib for his endorsement.
"I was very impressed with him and he was a very big fan of the Trump administration because he saw no wars — outside of defeating ISIS, but I inherited that — but there were no wars," Trump told journalists at Breitbart News. "There was no October 7. There was no Russian attack on Ukraine. He sees that and he told me — he saw a world that was at peace. Now, we have a world that's going to end up in World War 3 and I can stop that. I'm the only one that's going to stop that."
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