In the final 10-day stretch before election day, rapper Nicki Minaj joined President Donald Trump in Michigan to boost Republican Mike Rogers in his tight race for the U.S. Senate.
“Let’s make some noise for this great man,” Minaj said, referring to Rogers. “This is a major turning point for our country. And when you’re in major states like Michigan, we need this to be a leader in the movement that’s happening right now.”
It was a packed house on Oct. 25 for the nearly two-and-a-half-hour rally at the McMorran Place hockey arena in Port Huron, a city on the St. Clair River that borders Canada. The day marked the first time a sitting U.S. president has visited Port Huron, the largest city in Michigan’s agriculture-heavy “thumb” region with more than 28,000 residents.
The event was also significant for Trump and his party in their efforts to flip Michigan’s Senate seat, a feat the GOP hasn’t pulled off in more than 30 years. Rogers, who failed to beat Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) in 2024 with Trump’s name on the ballot and with the president winning the Great Lakes State, is trying again as Democrats look to win back a Senate majority.
This time around, the former congressman says he is running against a vastly different candidate than Slotkin—Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive populist who Rogers has cast as “too extreme for Michigan.” Rogers has made allegations that El-Sayed, who is Muslim, supports and has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood through his extended family.
Trump repeated those claims on the stage in Port Huron, but took the rhetoric a step further on Sunday, calling El-Sayed a “jihadist” and claiming he’s allied with terrorists.
“Over the past three weeks, I’ve traveled all over the country, but 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,” Trump said. “Michigan does not need a senator who’s on the side of the terrorists, and we need a senator who’s really 100, 1,000 percent on the side of America.”
When Trump was introducing David Beamer, the father of Flight 93 victim Todd Beamer, who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the president began to compare El-Sayed to the al-Qaeda-linked terrorists.
“Todd Beamer gave his life for America, and you have to give your vote for Todd Beamer. You can view it that way. We’re not letting a jihadist [into the Senate]—the people that did such damage that horrible day, the worst day … in our history, worse than Pearl Harbor,” Trump said.
The El-Sayed campaign did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.
In an emailed statement, the Michigan Democratic Party called Trump and Rogers’ rally a “last-ditch” effort.
“By standing with Donald Trump today, Mike Rogers, John James, and Michigan Republicans made it clear they are fully endorsing and ready to rubber stamp Trump’s toxic agenda,” the statement said. “Working families cannot afford the devastating costs and corruption of Trump’s agenda, and in nine days, Michiganders will elect Democrats to lower costs and deliver real relief for our state.”
El-Sayed has repeatedly denied having sympathy for or links to Islamist terrorist groups. Rogers has pointed to comments El-Sayed’s sister made online during the 2012 Egyptian presidential election referencing their birth mother’s Muslim Brotherhood activism in the 1970s. El-Sayed responded by saying he has never spoken to his mother about the Islamist group, and was mostly raised by his father and stepmother.
The Muslim Brotherhood, also known as the Society of Muslim Brothers, was founded in Egypt in 1928, and exists as a pan-Islamist movement that initially sought to oppose British colonial rule. Branches exist in multiple countries and operate differently, with some defending the use of violence and largely opposing equal rights for women and LGBT groups.
Certain chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood, such as those in Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt, were designated in November last year as foreign terrorist organizations for engaging in or supporting “violence and destabilization campaigns that harm their own regions, United States citizens, and United States interests.”
When Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Mohamed Morsi won the 2012 Egyptian presidential election, El-Sayed was listed as a signatory on an open letter penned by Egyptian Americans calling for Morsi to make “revolutionary decisions,” including purging the nation of members of the police and media who still had ties to ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak. The signatories called on Morsi to use his authority to undertake these actions temporarily.
In a piece he wrote in the Huffington Post in 2011, El-Sayed discussed the movement behind Morsi.
“Another fear on the part of pundits and politicians alike is that supporting democracy in Egypt might throw it to the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic opposition group to the ruling National Democratic Party,” El-Sayed wrote. “Even if the Muslim Brotherhood were to take power, there are several reasons why the ensuing state would look nothing like Iran.”
El-Sayed has said he has never supported the Muslim Brotherhood, and during a recent campaign event denounced the group when asked.
In 2012, Rogers said he was open to talks with certain members of the Muslim Brotherhood as a congressman when Morsi won the Egyptian presidential election.
Rogers said at the time that he believed “there are moderate Muslim Brotherhood individuals [that] we are going to have to reach out to and talk to.”
Trump has been on a recent campaign blitz to boost candidates in multiple states he comfortably won in 2024, including Georgia, Iowa, Florida, South Carolina, and Mississippi. But Michigan, which has been represented by Democrats in the U.S. Senate for more than 20 years, poses a unique challenge for Republicans this year.
Trump narrowly won the Great Lakes State in 2016 and 2024, and lost there in 2020 to Joe Biden. And when Trump won statewide two years ago, Rogers lost to Slotkin in a political environment that favored Republicans nationwide.
Now, without Trump’s name on the ballot to boost his chances, and with approval of aspects of the president’s agenda such as the Iran war and the economy falling in recent surveys, Rogers is locked in a tight race with El-Sayed.
El-Sayed is above Rogers by 1.9 percentage points in RealClearPolitics’ polling average. Recent polls have been close, putting El-Sayed up by only 1 to 2 points over Rogers.
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