Trump links Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to Muslim Brotherhood: 'He's a con man'

President Donald Trump has publicly tied Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan, to the Muslim Brotherhood, escalating a dispute over the candidate's family background. Speaking at a Rose Garden lunch on Thursday, Trump repeatedly described El-Sayed as a Muslim Brotherhood figure and suggested sarcastically that he should sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Fox News reports Trump also called the candidate a fraud and a con man.

The controversy traces to Republican scrutiny of posts by El-Sayed's half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi. In 2012 messages on X, she wrote that she had talked with her mother about the mother's activism in the Brotherhood during college in the early 1970s, and said her family had long been affiliated with the group, though she considered its approach to politics poorly conceived. Fox News describes the mother's membership, in Egypt, as active.

El-Sayed denies any family connection. Asked about it on NBC's Meet the Press, he said neither he nor his relatives have ties to the organization. He accused his opponent, Mike Rogers, of relying on his name and faith to portray him as an outsider and to encourage suspicion of him because of how he prays.

Summarized by PolitiKool from Fox News’s reporting. Read the full story at Fox News →