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Welcome to logout: Donald Trump’s midterm speech tour is getting increasingly ugly and desperate.
What happened? At a campaign rally in Port Huron, Miss., on Sunday, Trump launched a new round of anti-Muslim attacks on Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul-Sayed, calling him a “jihadist” who “should never be allowed into the halls of our great and beautiful Capitol.”
“If Abdul and the Democrats win, they will open the floodgates and invite hordes of jihadists to our shores and create a nightmare of violence and terror until you can’t even have Christmas,” Trump told supporters.
What’s the background? Trump’s speech marked the culmination of what has so far become an increasingly Islamophobic Republican midterm campaign centered on El-Sayed.
Former Rep. Mike Rogers, the Michigan Republican Senate candidate, has repeatedly tried to link El-Sayed to the Muslim Brotherhood, and Republicans have also tried to use Islamophobia against the Democratic Party as a whole.
On Sunday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told Fox News that his Democratic opponent Gina Hinojosa “supports Sharia law,” while at the Republican midterm conventions in September, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said “communism” and “Islamism” were aligning against the Republican Party.
What’s the big picture? In addition to his overt Islamophobia, Trump’s behavior on the campaign trail in the final weeks of the midterm elections has also been decidedly bizarre and marked by surprising physical descriptions of Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH).
Now, with just eight days left, Trump’s itinerary includes rallies in Mississippi, Texas, Ohio, South Carolina and Florida — all Republican states where the party finds itself facing somewhat tougher Senate races than expected.
It’s hardly a travel schedule for a president who feels comfortable with his party’s chances — in a state like Michigan, where El-Sayed is leading in recent polls.
That’s it, time to log off…
The U.S. election may not be held until next week, but two other countries held elections over the weekend: Serbia and Brazil. As my colleague Caitlin Dewey reports in Vox’s Today’s Explained newsletter, both were surprise victories for right-wing nationalist parties, with Serbia ousting incumbent strongman Aleksandar Vučić.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s victory over Flavio Bolsonaro is also particularly good news for the climate: As The New York Times reported earlier this month, the fate of the Amazon rainforest may well depend on the outcome of the election.
Thanks for reading, have a great night and see you tomorrow!