During a trip to Michigan on Monday, President Donald Trump focused on Democratic Senate nominee Abdul el Sayed and said, “I’m here to keep a jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member from becoming a United States senator.”
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I → focus → member
A moment later, Trump added, “Mohamed is a jihadist lunatic who hates our country, the black people of Detroit, and wants to see the U.S. fail.”
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U.S. → add → Detroit
(The president was referring to el Sayed’s full name, which is Abdulrahman Mohamed el Sayed.)
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which → refer → name
Even with the intense rhetoric that has characterized this race, Trump’s use of “jihadist” seemed a step beyond.
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use → characterize → jihadist
So the next day, as Vice President JD Vance arrived at Joint Base Andrews to board Air Force Two for his own trip to Michigan, I asked Vance, “Is Abdul el Sayed a jihadist, as the president said?”
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“Well, look, he certainly has a lot of weird friends, and he said a lot of crazy stuff,” Vance answered.
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Vance → arrive → stuff
“And he has identified himself with a segment of the Democratic Party which, by the way, I don’t think represents most Democrats in the country.
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I → identify → country
But unfortunately, it represents a lot of elected Democrats who seem to align with people who justify violence against the United States of America.
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who → represent → America
I don’t know what’s in the guy’s heart.
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what → know → heart
I just know he has a lot of weird friends.”
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he → know → friends
For one, he seemed to be saying that he, JD Vance, would not have used the word “jihadist” to describe Abdul el Sayed.
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he → seem → Sayed
On the other hand, Vance seemed to suggest that Trump was on to something that needed to be discussed in the Michigan Senate race.
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that → seem → race
Vance, the former senator from Ohio, began by making light of the rivalry between his home state and Michigan.
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Vance → begin → state
But he quickly moved to the similarities of small towns in those states — idyllic, upright, American to the core.
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he → move → core
“Both are filled with Americans who work hard and have sacrificed much for their country,” Vance said.
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Vance → fill → country
“And I’m talking particularly about the grandsons and granddaughters of those who built the arsenal of democracy during the Second World War.”
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who → talk → War
They built a good life for themselves, Vance told the audience.
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Vance → build → audience
“You know, it was our states that built the great American middle class, it was our states that ushered in an era of prosperity unlike anything the world had ever seen,” he said.
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he → know → anything
“We showed everybody that everyone had a part to play in the great American success story, whether you were a welder, a janitor, or a CEO.
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you → show → story
But then things began to go wrong.
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things → begin → ?
The elites running the country felt “indifference to the fate” of small towns in the heartland.
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elites → run → heartland
Factory jobs were shipped overseas.
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jobs → ship → ?
Local businesses suffered.
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businesses → suffer → ?
Vance recalled playing peewee football, and on his jersey was printed the name of the local business that supported the team.
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that → recall → team
“And I distinctly remember looking at my old jerseys and seeing the names of businesses that had sponsored those teams and realizing that most of the teams I played for, those businesses no longer existed,” Vance said.
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Vance → remember → teams
“They were casualties of politicians in a faraway place who didn’t give a damn what happened to Michigan or Ohio, and it was us that paid the consequences.”
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that → give → consequences
Then came 9/11, which happened when Vance was 17 years old.
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Vance → come → ?
Americans unified, but Vance also remembered “going to a gas station and waiting in line for hours for gasoline that, of course, had shot up in price because of a region of the world made up of countries whose name I couldn’t even pronounce.”
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I → unify → name
Americans went to war.
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Americans → go → war
Vance remembered that “in 2003 there were only two kids from my block who graduated from high school that year; it was me and a buddy of mine named Nick.
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it → remember → mine
And both of us immediately enlisted in the United States Marine Corps.”
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both → enlist → Corps
Then Vance recalled “coming home from Iraq to labor strikes in my hometown, because there was a threat that even more of the factories that my town relied on would be closed down and shipped to another country.
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town → recall → country
And I remember distinctly wondering why it was that politicians seemed to care so little for the places that farmed our food, that built our cars, and that sent our troops to fight in wars.
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that → remember → wars
And on it went, for years.
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it → go → years
Then, finally, came rescue in the person of President Donald Trump.
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rescue → come → Trump
“If you think about it, our movement is about sovereignty, the idea that the people’s government belongs to the people, not to lobbyists, not to bureaucrats, not to foreign money, and not to illegal aliens,” Vance said.
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Vance → think → aliens
“At its heart, our movement is about returning control of the United States of America to you, which is exactly where it belongs.”
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it → return → you
At that point, well into the speech, Vance had not said a word about Abdul el Sayed.
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Vance → say → Sayed
He had not called el Sayed a jihadist, had not even said he has a lot of weird friends.
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he → call → friends
Instead, Vance had painted a portrait of formerly great small-town America, made great by small-town Americans, that went through bad times at the hand of self-centered elites but is now becoming great again under Trump.
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that → paint → Trump
Only then, after all that, did Vance introduced Abdul el Sayed as someone who doesn’t really care about that America, who doesn’t even want to be part of it, and appears to feel contempt, or at least hostile indifference, toward it.
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who → introduce → it
…and 36 more, not listed.
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