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Welcome to The Logoff: Donald Trump’s midterm barnstorming is getting uglier and more desperate.
What’s happening? At a campaign rally in Port Huron, Michigan, on Sunday, Trump launched a new round of anti-Muslim attacks against Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, describing him as a “jihadist” who “should never be allowed inside the halls of our great beautiful Capitol.”
“If Abdul and the Democrats win,” Trump told supporters, “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.”
What’s the context? Trump’s speech marks the crescendo — so far — of what has become an increasingly Islamophobic midterm campaign by the Republican Party, centered on El-Sayed.
Former Rep. Mike Rogers, Michigan’s Republican Senate nominee, has repeatedly tried to link El-Sayed to the Muslim Brotherhood, and Republicans have also attempted to wield Islamophobia against the Democratic Party as a whole.
On Sunday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told Fox News that his Democratic opponent, Gina Hinojosa, “supports Sharia law,” while at the Republican midterm convention in September, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said that “communism” and “Islamism” were allying against Republicans.
What’s the big picture? In addition to his overt Islamophobia, Trump’s presence on the campaign trail in the final few weeks of the midterm elections has been decidedly strange and surprisingly heavy on physical descriptions of Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH).
Now, with just eight days to go, Trump’s itinerary features rallies in Mississippi, Texas, Ohio, South Carolina, and Florida — all Republican states where the party has found itself, to one degree or another, with a tougher-than-expected Senate race on its hands.
It’s hardly the travel schedule of a president who feels good about his party’s chances— such as in Michigan, where El-Sayed is leading in most recent polls.
And with that, it’s time to log off…
US elections may not be until next week, but two other countries held theirs over the weekend: Serbia and Brazil. As my colleague Caitlin Dewey reports in Vox’s Today, Explained newsletter, both resulted in surprise victories over right-wing nationalist parties, with Serbia ousting its incumbent strongman, Aleksandar Vučić.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s victory over Flávio Bolsonaro is also especially good news for the climate: As the New York Times reported earlier this month, the fate of the Amazon rainforest may well have hinged on the outcome of the election.
Thanks for reading, have a great evening, and we’ll see you tomorrow!