Mary Trump Faults National Democrats' 'Halfhearted' Support for Abdul El-Sayed

Mary Trump said on Wednesday that Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan's open Senate seat despite halfhearted support from national Democrats. She also said Representative Haley Stevens of Michigan, the Democrat he beat in the primary, made things harder by endorsing Republican Mike Rogers.

Mary Trump, the president's niece and a Democrat, made the remarks on The Mary Trump Podcast the day after the midterms. The rest of the episode celebrated the results. Her complaint about national Democrats was the second time in the episode that she took aim at her own side.

"And despite halfhearted support from national Democrats, despite the fact that his primary opponent, whom he may hate, Haley Stevens, decided to endorse the Republican, as if that made any sense, El-Sayed won his race because Michigan voters refused to take the bait," she said.

Haley Stevens's Endorsement of Mike Rogers

The Stevens part of her complaint is on the record. Stevens endorsed Rogers on Sunday. She appeared with him at Detroit's Perfecting Church two days before the election. El-Sayed had declined a scheduled unity event with her, saying he would "rather not distract from the key issues of this campaign," CBS News reported.

"Our Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, Abdul, said that I was no longer welcome in his campaign and that I should stay away, and he's right," Stevens said in a video she posted Sunday, CBS News reported.

The endorsement split Michigan Democrats in the final days of the race. Other hosts on the left had also gone after her. Jon Favreau said he wanted Stevens off TV, and Hasan Piker criticized the endorsement after Stevens named him as one reason for it.

What National Democrats Did for El-Sayed

"Halfhearted" is Mary Trump's own description. Party leaders did oppose El-Sayed in the primary, which he won over Stevens on August 4. Stevens and her allies spent nearly nine times as much on advertising as El-Sayed and his allies, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact, and the Democratic establishment, including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Sen. Gary Peters and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, backed Stevens, NBC News reported.

Mary Trump did not say which Democrats she had in mind or what more they should have done.

Mike Rogers's Campaign and the Michigan Result

She said Rogers ran a "despicably Islamophobic campaign," which is her characterization. Rogers, President Trump and other conservatives made claims linking El-Sayed to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement founded in Egypt, and El-Sayed rejected the claims, Bridge Michigan reported. At a rally, the president said, "I'm here to keep a jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member from becoming a United States senator," NBC News reported.

"They refused to allow the Islamophobia to stand unchallenged," Mary Trump said of Michigan voters.

The Associated Press called the race for El-Sayed at 2:27 a.m. on Wednesday. At that point he led by nearly 6 percentage points with 85 percent of ballots counted. PolitiKool's polling average had him up 5.2 points going into Election Day.

First Muslim Elected to the U.S. Senate

El-Sayed, who held leadership positions in public health in Detroit and Wayne County, is the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Senate, Time reported. Mary Trump described him on air as the "first Muslim man to serve in the United States Senate." He will take the seat of retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters.

A Broader Shot at Her Party

Earlier in the episode, before she turned to Michigan, she had taken a broader shot at her party. She said "some Democrats, who shall not at the moment be named" were wrong to read the midterms as being only about affordability. She said she was not denying the economy mattered, but that treating the election as being about one issue missed the point.

Near the end of the episode she returned to the theme. "We need to get rid of those who won't understand what's at stake and what's possible," she said.

She did not name anyone in either remark. The open question is whether the party's leadership will hear her complaints as criticism of them.