Trump increases engagement with Arab Americans in Michigan in final days of campaign

Swing state could determine outcome of battle for the White House

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Surrounded by people with raised mobile phones, Donald Trump visited an Arab-owned cafe in Dearborn, Michigan, as the Republican presidential nominee looks to convince wary Arab Americans to vote for him.

With only days until the presidential election, Mr Trump's campaign has been increasing its efforts to reach out to Arab-American voters, seizing on anger from the community over President Joe Biden's support for Israel in the war in Gaza and the invasion of Lebanon.

The Trump campaign has been focused heavily on Michigan, a critical battleground state that is also home to a large concentration of Arab and Muslim Americans.

“You're going to have peace in the Middle East” if he is elected, Mr Trump said on Friday while visiting the cafe owned by a Lebanese-American family. He was flanked by Massad Boulos, a Lebanese-American businessman whose son, Michael, is married to the former president's daughter, Tiffany.

“[You won't have peace] with the clowns that you have running the US right now.”

The elder Mr Boulos, along with Richard Grenell, a former director of national intelligence, have been rallying support for Mr Trump in the Arab-American community.

Mr Grenell said he has conducted 33 in-person and virtual meetings with community members in recent months.

“We've been talking to this community for a very long time,” Mr Grenell said on Friday during an event held at Sheeba, a Yemeni-owned restaurant in Dearborn.

“It's really easy to ignore communities, it's really easy to ignore problems that begin to bubble up, and that's what sparks violence and war. We must have someone who does the hard work of digging in, meeting, listening and demanding peace, a strong leader like Donald Trump.”

Residents of Dearborn, the capital of Arab America, say the Trump campaign's approach and their message have been catching on.

Mr Trump is the first presidential candidate to visit the city of more than 100,000 people, where the majority are of Arab descent.

“Trump is not a saint,” Ali Aljahmi, whose family owns Sheeba restaurant, told The National. “But Trump is the better option, I really don't see Kamala fixing the issue. When you have a president that's coming to your town, coming to Hamtramck and coming to Dearborn, saying, 'we're gonna stop the war,' it means something. He's very close to us now.”

Mr Aljahmi put out a video on the restaurant's social media pages endorsing Mr Trump.

Historically, Arab Americans have leaned towards the Democratic Party. In 2020, the overwhelming majority of Arabs voted for Mr Biden, denying Mr Trump a second term in office.

But anger with the Biden administration's support for Israel since October 7 has created an opportunity for Mr Trump.

Initial hopes that Vice President Kamala Harris, who became the Democratic nominee in July, would adopt a more sympathetic tone towards Arab-American voters quickly faded.

Residents of Dearborn say Ms Harris's campaign has done little to reach out to the community.

On November 5, Samraa Luqman says she is going to cast her vote for Mr Trump.

“For me the number one issue is Gaza and having peace there is paramount to everything else,” Ms Luqman told The National.

“There is a lot of hope around the Republican messaging.”

It is a major switch for the Yemeni-American. Back in 2020, she was a fervent supporter of Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from Vermont. On election day, she wrote in his name on her ballot.

Ms Luqman, like many Arab Americans in Dearborn, is well aware of the risks that would come with having Mr Trump back in the White House.

The last time he was in office, he frequently made racist comments towards Muslims and Arabs and he passed the so-called Muslim travel ban.

“We are willing to sacrifice four years of our privileges, even suffer through another Muslim ban and Islamophobia if it were to mean the end of atrocities abroad,” she said.

Polls show Mr Trump and Ms Harris are neck and neck in Michigan.

But a recent Arab News/YouGov survey of Arab American voters showed Mr Trump leading Ms Harris by two percentage points.

“Harris miscalculated badly because she thinks that Arab Democrats would vote for her anyway like they did in 2020 against Trump,” Bishara Bahbah, the founder and chairman of Arab Americans for Trump, told The National.

“But that’s a huge miscalculation on her part and Trump is taking advantage of that.”

At least 43,000 Palestinians have been killed over the course of more than a year of near daily Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip.

The war was ignited on October 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people.

Mr Trump has won the endorsements of two Muslim Democratic mayors in the Detroit area – the Yemeni-American mayor of Hamtramck Amer Ghalib and Lebanese-American Bill Bazzi, the mayor of Dearborn Heights.

Hamtramck Mayor Amer Ghalib has endorsed Donald Trump. AFP

Mike Hachem is a long-time Republican. The Lebanese American says that in 2020, most Arab Americans in the community were adamantly opposed to Mr Trump.

“It’s very much shifting, the Democratic stronghold is broken, the Arab community is no longer a Democratic stronghold,” Mr Hachem told The National.

“You have prominent Democrats that are just shifting, that are meeting with us, that are falling off the Kamala bandwagon and saying what can Trump offer us?”

Mr Hachem says a cousin of his has been killed in Israeli strikes on Lebanon and his village has been flattened.

Since the beginning of October, Israel has been launching daily strikes on Lebanon that it says are aimed at Hezbollah.

More than 2,500 Lebanese people have been killed and roughly 12,000 wounded in the past year, according to the country's health ministry. Another 1.2 million people have been displaced.

“People are tired of waking up in the morning and seeing dead bodies on television,” Mr Hachem said.