Donald Trump is not invincible

Oct 26, 2026

At 3:29 this afternoon, the President of the United States gripped the podium with both hands and leaned forward to steady himself while the crowd chanted, “USA! USA! USA!” He had just arrived at the hockey arena in Port Huron, Michigan, after an uneventful flight aboard Qatari Air Force One and a motorcade that passed right by a protester holding up a sign that read “TRAITOR” and “RAPIST.”

Over the next one hour and forty-eight minutes, Donald Trump declared that the United States owns Greenland, called Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed a jihadist who is “on the side of the terrorists,” and told Jewish Americans who support El-Sayed that they should be ashamed of themselves and never speak to him again. He then invited the father of a September 11 hero onto the stage to tell thousands of people that having a United States birth certificate doesn’t make someone an American. And then, seemingly forgetting why he was even there, he stopped to talk once again about looking at another man’s “ass.”

The man Donald Trump came to Michigan to destroy was born in metro Detroit, earned a medical degree, and became an epidemiologist who once ran the city of Detroit’s health department, and if Michigan elects him in nine days, he will become the first Muslim ever elected to the United States Senate. That is what today was really about, and just three minutes into his speech, Donald Trump admitted as much: “I’m here today in Michigan for a very important reason. I’m here to keep a jihadist, Muslim Brotherhood member from becoming a United States senator.” Then he promised that “the people of Michigan are going to defeat Abdul Mohammed,” a name El-Sayed doesn’t use, but one Trump repeated to make him sound more foreign and threatening to the crowd.

Trump then went after El-Sayed’s family, accusing his mother of supporting al Qaeda, his sister of celebrating the October 7 terrorist attacks, and his father-in-law of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Associated Press reported that there is no evidence El-Sayed has any connection to the Muslim Brotherhood, and Michigan Public found that the accusations against his mother were not supported by the available evidence. But none of that mattered to Trump. He was using El-Sayed’s family and his Muslim faith to portray him as a terrorist and convince Americans that he was someone to fear.

Then he moved from El-Sayed’s family to El-Sayed himself. “Anyone with that record of support for jihadists would be screened and unable to get a seat on an airplane,” Trump said. “They certainly should not give him a seat in the United States Senate. He would be the only senator that will have to go through a metal detector before he’s allowed to go into the Senate. I want him to have a metal detector.” He said that “Michigan does not need a senator who’s on the side of the terrorists,” and that El-Sayed “wants our country to go to Sharia law.”

Then Donald Trump proved just how unfit he is to lead a country built by immigrants when he tried to turn two groups of Americans, both of whom have faced hatred and discrimination, against each other. He told the crowd, “Any Jewish person that supports this guy should be ashamed of themselves, I’ll tell you right now,” and added, “You should never speak to him again.” He went on to claim that he was “polling at 99% in Israel” and that he could not understand “how anybody who’s Jewish can even think about voting for this guy.” In just a few sentences, the President of the United States told Jewish Americans to turn their backs on Muslim Americans and suggested that their votes and friendships should be based on their religion rather than their own beliefs. What Trump was trying to say is that Muslims are guilty simply because they are Muslim, and Jews are guilty if they refuse to treat Muslims like enemies. This is how authoritarian leaders divide a country. They turn people against their neighbors, convince them that other Americans are the enemy, and demand loyalty to themselves above everyone else.

Later in his speech, Donald Trump took his attacks even further, telling the crowd, “If Abdul and the Democrats win, they will open the floodgates and invite hordes of jihadists to our shores, creating a nightmare of violence and terror until you cannot even have a Christmas.”

With just nine days until the midterm elections, and Republicans facing growing anger over inflation, soaring gas prices, and Trump’s war in Iran, Donald Trump took his attacks to an entirely different level. He brought up the September 11 terrorist attacks and began telling the story of Todd Beamer, who was born in Flint, Michigan, and was one of the brave passengers aboard United Flight 93 who fought back against the hijackers and prevented the plane from reaching its intended target, saving untold numbers of lives. But Trump was not telling this story to honor an American hero. He was using it to attack Abdul El-Sayed. “Twenty-five years later, Michigan needs to stand up and fight just like Todd did to stop a jihadist from walking into the Capitol,” Trump said, before continuing, “Todd Beamer gave his life for America. And you have to give your vote for Todd Beamer, if you can view it that way.” The President of the United States had just compared voting against a Muslim American doctor to the courage shown by Americans who sacrificed their lives fighting terrorists on September 11. And then he invited Todd Beamer’s father onto the stage.

Like so many of us, I have always thought of Todd Beamer as a true American patriot and a hero, a man who spent his final minutes on earth thinking of other people. He found an extraordinary strength that morning, the kind that, thankfully, few of us will ever have to search for. That is what made what happened next so painful to watch.

David Beamer, who told the crowd he was “four score and four” (or 84 years old), spoke for nearly twelve minutes. He began by asking everyone to pray before taking a disturbing turn and comparing the enemies America faced on September 11 to the ones he claimed we face today. “The enemy has not come from abroad. The enemy is right here among us. Local terrorists. Local citizens that want to demolish our country. They call themselves Democratic Socialists of America. Do you know what the DS really stands for? Demolition specialists.” He went on to claim that the Democratic Socialists’ platform “reads like the terrorist platform of 9/11 on steroids,” that “Abdul would much prefer Sharia law,” and that “the mantra of their platform is really death to America.” A father still reeling from the unimaginable loss of his son, who was murdered by terrorists on September 11, stood in front of thousands of Americans and told them that their own neighbors, people who want things like affordable health care and public education, were terrorists too.

The rest of his words were equally disturbing, and the President of the United States of America stood behind him, listening and agreeing with every word he said. “Mike Rogers is an American. Abdul has a birth certificate. The birth certificate says he’s a citizen of America. Well, you know what? A birth certificate doesn’t make you an American.” He kept going. “He has a birth certificate, but he’s not an American. He had the choice to be an American or not. He has chosen otherwise. He has blood that’s red. However, he has chosen to remove any strain of the white and blue part in his blood. We cannot allow this man to invade and occupy our country.” He suggested that people who disagree with him should “take their energy and their money, go buy an island someplace and try that socialism thing again somewhere else,” and take Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders along with them. Then he led thousands of people in a chant of his son’s final words, words that have long stood for courage and sacrifice, but were now being used as part of a political attack against a fellow American. “On three. One, two, three. Let’s roll.”

When it was over, Donald Trump didn’t correct him or remind his fellow Americans that hatred, especially hatred directed at Muslim Americans, has no place in this country. Instead, he thanked David and Peggy Beamer and told them, “Your boy is looking down very proud of you both right now.”

David Beamer has lived through a loss I cannot imagine, and nothing I say will ever take away from his grief or from his son’s heroism. But he did not wander onto that stage, and he was not ambushed. He came as a surrogate for Mike Rogers, whom he has endorsed and for whom he has appeared in campaign advertising against El-Sayed, and he chose every one of those words. I can hold compassion for a grieving father and still hold him accountable for the dangerous things he said. The men who murdered Todd Beamer believed that an entire nation of people was their enemy, that thousands of human beings they had never met deserved to die because of who they were and what they believed. Twenty-five years later, Todd’s father stood on a stage and taught a crowd of Americans to believe the same kind of thing about their neighbors. That is the real heartbreak of what happened in Port Huron today. The hatred that took his son has found its way into him.

What Donald Trump encouraged today is not new. We’ve seen variations of this type of hatred and division before, and history has shown us where it leads. In 1935, Nazi Germany passed the Reich Citizenship Law, which declared that only a person “of German or kindred blood” could be a citizen of the Reich. Jewish Germans whose families had lived in the country for generations, who had fought for Germany in World War I, and who held German birth certificates were stripped of their full rights as citizens. They were still living in the country they called home, but they were no longer considered equal members of it. When David Beamer told the audience that a man’s birth certificate doesn’t make him an American and questioned his loyalty using the colors of the American flag, he was making an argument with a disturbing historical parallel: that belonging to a country is not determined by citizenship under the law, but by whether those in power consider you worthy of being called an American. And Donald Trump stood behind him and let him say the very things that Donald Trump himself also believes.

And we have seen this happen right here in America, too. In 1942, the United States government forced roughly 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry from their homes on the West Coast and sent them to incarceration camps. Nearly two-thirds of them were American citizens, many born right here in California. They had American birth certificates, but none of that mattered because their own government had decided that their ancestry made them a threat to the country they called home. Decades later, a federal commission determined that what happened was the result of “race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.” The United States eventually formally apologized and paid reparations to surviving victims.

I still remember reading Farewell to Manzanar in school and struggling to understand how the United States of America could have done something so horrible to its own people. Much like when I first learned about slavery, I couldn’t understand how so many people could have stood by and allowed their fellow human beings to be treated that way. I remember wondering how anyone could have believed it was acceptable, let alone participated in it. And here we are, 84 years after Japanese Americans were first forced from their homes, watching history begin to rhyme once again. We have already lived through the consequences of allowing our government to decide that some Americans are less American than others simply because of who they are or where their families came from. We should not have to learn that lesson again.

Like many Americans, I didn’t grow up around Muslim people. I’m sure there were Muslim families in my community; I just didn’t know them. I grew up with friends who were Mormon, Jewish, Catholic, Christian, and some who followed no religion at all, but I didn’t have a close Muslim friend until I went to college. In 1995, during my freshman year, I was seated next to a young Muslim man who would become a close friend.

One night, I was feeling stressed about schoolwork and wanted to go for a walk late in the evening to clear my mind. He insisted on coming with me to keep me company and make sure I was safe. It was on that walk that he told me about his faith and family. What stayed with me the most was how peaceful his religion was, and how much he cared about his mother. Through him, I met more Muslim friends, and not one of them ever tried to convert me. Not one of them ever said a word about my hair being uncovered, even though many of their mothers covered theirs, and not one of them ever made me feel anything but welcome. We were all just kids learning how to be adults, trying to figure out who we were while having some fun along the way.

Six years later, on September 11th, I didn’t think of him. I didn’t think of his family or his friends, because I had never once connected him to extremism, and why would I have? He was the friend who insisted on walking with me so I’d be safe. In the same way, I don’t hold Jewish people responsible for the Israeli government’s war in Gaza, I don’t hold all Palestinians responsible for what Hamas did on October 7th, and I don’t hold every American responsible for Donald Trump. The list goes on and on, because that is how human beings actually are. We are not our governments, and we are not the worst person who happens to share our faith.

Maybe the most important lesson that history can teach us right now is that if someone stands up and tells us that an entire group of people is evil, that they should be feared, watched, screened, or sent away, the person we should fear most is the one saying it, not the people they are trying to turn us against. Because never in history has the real threat been an entire people. The threat has always been the man with the microphone who needs us to believe otherwise. David Beamer told the crowd today that “the enemy is right here among us,” and he was right about that. But the enemy wasn’t a doctor running for the Senate. It was the man sharing that stage with him, the one who invited him up there and handed him the microphone.

Bishara Bahbah, a founder of Arab Americans for Trump, helped lead Donald Trump’s outreach to Arab American voters in Michigan during the 2024 election. Today, he told the Associated Press, “The president’s statements are out of line. They are crossing a red line. They are racist.” He continued, “The remarks are out of line and crazy. I mean, no sane individual would say these things,” before adding, “The president of the United States saying that about a person because of his religion, that is just not acceptable. And people are going to remember that on Nov. 3.” Two years ago, this man was helping Donald Trump win Michigan. Tonight, he is publicly calling the president’s remarks racist, and that tells us just how far this has gone, even for some of the people who once supported him.

Senator Bernie Sanders, who joined El-Sayed in Grand Rapids tonight, said Republicans are turning to Islamophobia because they have no answers for Americans struggling with health care, housing, and the cost of living. “All they can do is foment hatred and divisiveness,” he said. At that same rally, El-Sayed responded to Trump’s attacks with a little humor, telling the crowd, “I don’t even care that he remembers my whole name because he can just go on and call me ‘senator’ after November,” before adding, to loud cheers, “I will be Senator Muhammad to you, bro.” El-Sayed has also called the attacks on his loyalty “shameful.”

While Donald Trump was in Michigan today trying to convince Americans to fear their own neighbors, people in other parts of the world were showing us what happens when ordinary citizens refuse to be afraid anymore. In April, Hungary voted out Viktor Orbán after sixteen years in power, despite Donald Trump and JD Vance throwing their support behind him. I have written before about how Hungary felt when I visited in 2019, how the country I had once fallen in love with seemed to be holding its breath. In April, it finally exhaled.

Today, it was Brazil’s turn. Yesterday, Reuters published a disturbing investigation into how two Trump administration officials worked behind the scenes to help return the Bolsonaro family to power, pushing for sanctions to sway the election and telling American diplomats that restoring Jair Bolsonaro was United States policy. When his conviction for plotting a coup made that impossible, they shifted their attention to getting his son, Flávio, elected instead. But the Brazilian people had other plans. Tonight, President Lula defeated Flávio Bolsonaro with 51.79 percent of the vote, and people poured into the streets of São Paulo to celebrate. Despite everything the Trump administration did to interfere, the Brazilian people made their own decision to resist a far-right takeover.

In Serbia, where Aleksandar Vučić had dominated politics for nearly fourteen years, a student-led resistance movement accomplished what once seemed impossible. After nearly two years of protests against government corruption, ordinary citizens came together and defeated him at the ballot box. The student-backed movement won roughly 52 percent of the vote, and Vučić conceded defeat almost immediately. Young people who had been accused of being enemies of their own country stood together and helped bring down a government that had spent years trying to silence them.

Hope for America with Heather Delaney Reese

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