Donald Trump’s new favorite Democratic target turned the president’s words against him after he warned that he was campaigning to abolish the Senate filibuster.
Trump, 80, took aim at Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed in a Truth Social post on Thursday, only for the candidate to brush off the attack with a quip of his own: “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
Addressing “our Great Republican Senators, friends of mine ‘all,’” Trump warned that “the Communist Dumocrat Senate Candidate from Michigan, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, is touting, as perhaps his single most important point, the Termination of the Filibuster.”
Trump went on to claim that if El-Sayed succeeded in persuading Democrats to abolish the Senate rule, they “would gain four senators, eight congressmen, many electoral and popular votes, a stacked Supreme Court with 23 Justices,” before declaring he would be “the last Republican president!”
The president’s claim that the Michigan-born epidemiologist, who would become the Senate’s first Muslim member if elected in November, has gone “Termination CRAZY” comes despite Trump’s own past calls for Republicans to abolish the filibuster.
Over the past months, Trump has repeatedly pushed to eliminate the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for advancing most legislation after his “Save America Act”—which would impose new proof-of-citizenship requirements and other voting rules that critics argue would disenfranchise large numbers of Americans—stalled in the chamber.
Most Republicans have resisted ending the filibuster, fearing that the move could hurt them if they lose control of the Senate and return to the minority. The rule can be changed in two ways: senators can formally rewrite the chamber’s rules with a two-thirds vote, or the Senate can use a procedural maneuver known as the “nuclear option” to lower the 60-vote threshold with a simple majority vote.
El-Sayed, 41, has made abolishing the filibuster a key campaign issue, arguing that the rule allows senators to “hide behind” procedural hurdles while making it easier to stall legislation.
Trump’s warning about the filibuster comes as Democrats appear increasingly poised to make gains in the November midterms, while the president continues to dismiss troubling economic polls. The growing concerns have fueled anxiety among some Republican senators that they may need to distance themselves from Trump to improve their chances at the ballot box.
The president’s criticism of El-Sayed is not the first time that Trump has gone after the nominee. On Wednesday, during a speech to a Las Vegas crowd that was billed as one about tax legislation, Trump digressed into a profane rant about the 41-year-old, at one point sarcastically calling him a “lovely gentleman.”
El-Sayed has remained unfazed by the president’s and Republicans’ attacks after defeating establishment-backed Rep. Haley Stevens in a hard-fought Democratic primary contest. He argued that Trump cannot stay focused, accusing the president of being more concerned with his White House ballroom project than with Americans’ affordability concerns.
“I’m glad he thinks I’m a lovely gentleman. A lot of people think so,” El-Sayed told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins in response to Trump’s attacks.
The Daily Beast has reached out to El-Sayed’s campaign and the White House for comment.
