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DEARBORN HEIGHTS, Michigan — Invoice Bazzi, the mayor of Dearborn Heights, was all smiles after we met in his workplace yesterday, on Election Day eve. He’d simply wrapped his ending touches on a speech he would give in Grand Rapids later within the night at Trump’s closing marketing campaign rally.
Bazzi, together with Amer Ghalib, the mayor of close by Hamtramck, are Muslim and Arab leaders who’re stumping for Trump within the vital battleground of Michigan. It is a state Joe Biden won by roughly 154,000 votes in 2020, leaning closely on help from areas like Dearborn Heights and Hamtramck, the place Arab American voters have been pivotal.
The mayors’ endorsements got here as the previous president — with simply days to go earlier than the election — swapped his trademark anti-Muslim fearmongering for a softer pitch to Arab and Muslim communities pissed off with the present administration’s dealing with of the Israel-Gaza battle.
It’s a key challenge right here in Michigan. This bloc usually votes for Democrats, but when a large portion breaks from Kamala Harris, it might be sufficient to doom her possibilities within the state and probably the White Home.
Bazzi, who fled from Lebanon as a toddler throughout its civil struggle and later joined the Marine Corps to serve in Tunisia and Morocco, tells POLITICO that he was planning to help Trump months in the past. He additionally voted for him in each 2016 and 2020.
The mayor dismissed questions on Trump’s “journey ban,” which he signed on Day 1 of his presidency, and his recent vow to “ban refugee resettlement from terror infested areas just like the Gaza Strip.” Regardless of Trump’s criticism of Palestinians and feedback encouraging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “end the job,” Bazzi maintains the previous president is “a person of peace,” since no wars have been began underneath his administration.
We discuss Bazzi’s perception in Trump and what turned him off Harris and the Democratic Occasion — all of which offer a window into the mindset of many pro-Trump Arab voters who might sway tonight’s election leads to Michigan.
This interview has been edited for size and readability.
We’re talking on the verge of a historic election. You’re a barrier breaker in your personal proper: the primary Arab and first Muslim mayor of Dearborn Heights. That is nonetheless thought-about a extremely blue part of Michigan, so your endorsement of Trump raised plenty of eyebrows. Discuss me by means of the method of that call.
Each my mother and father have been auto staff. It was at all times taught: You’ve set to work arduous. My mother and father have been socially conservative. However my mother and father at all times voted with Democrats. They thought, “Democrats are gonna maintain folks like us.” All our life, we grew up considering that.
With my expertise with the navy, spending time abroad, deployed to totally different nations that I served in and visited, attending to know leaders of various nations … I wasn’t making a call on the fly. On this election I used to be supporting Trump all the best way.
So this determination was previous to the change on the Democratic facet, when Harris was elevated to the highest of the ticket.
Precisely.
Beneath Biden, there’s wars that have been began, main wars underneath his administration. Wars that may lead us to World Struggle III. Our economic system is admittedly unhealthy at this level. I talked to a resident yesterday as she was placing her poll in a field, and he or she advised me she will be able to’t afford fundamental requirements.
She’s in her 80s, and now we’re asking her to ration — to watch out what she eats, how a lot she eats, as a result of the price of residing and inflation is so excessive?
Only for my clarification, your thoughts was made up earlier than Biden stepped out of the race. Harris vowed in East Lansing on Sunday that she “will do the whole lot in my energy to finish the struggle in Gaza.” However that hasn’t swayed your determination?
My thoughts was made up from earlier than. My major goal is about peace and financial prosperity for our nation. However what actually pushed me over the sting is when Kamala Harris introduced Liz Cheney to our yard.
I simply had a flashback to when her dad, [former Vice President Dick Cheney], began the struggle in Iraq, when he was telling the world there’s “weapons of mass destruction” there. So we began the struggle in Iraq underneath that assumption and on the similar time, the corporate [Halliburton] that her father was tied to ended up making billions from protection contracts. So now you carry a Cheney to our yard, whose household began a struggle, and now we’re in a struggle.
That is after I was like, sufficient of this! I made a decision to go ahead with a public endorsement after I chatted with President Trump to search out out his platform. He’s a person of peace.
What did he inform you his proposal was for ending or intervening within the Israel-Gaza battle?
He dedicated to bringing peace and stability and peace diplomacy and likewise ending the struggle.
OK, so he —
However there isn’t any plan, like, “Hey, you recognize, this is my plan.” It was principally simply his assertion and his dedication to stopping the struggle.
He [also] stated one thing that was magical: When he was speaking about nations sending their criminals into the US, that he’ll ship these folks again.
I heard him say a number of occasions that if these nations do not need to take their folks again, then we simply minimize their navy assist or assist interval.
So it feels like that is about immigration for you, too.
It is a critical challenge for me, as a result of as a mayor, I am answerable for the safety and security of all of the residents in my metropolis, so I gotta be sure I safeguard each resident that lives in my metropolis or each enterprise.
(Editor’s notice: Analysis exhibits that immigrants, each documented and undocumented, commit crimes at lower rates than the U.S.-born inhabitants.)
You stated what solidified your determination to go public together with your endorsement is when Harris introduced Cheney to Michigan to marketing campaign.
What you appear to be saying, too, is there could also be some guilt by affiliation for each Cheney and Harris. Some folks will say Harris is the vice chairman, she was not the ultimate decision-maker on Israel and what assist is shipped to them. And it was not Cheney, however her father, who set the stage for the Iraq invasion.
Some might take this as you blaming these two girls who did not have complete management on both of those points.
It has nothing to do with gender.
[Cheney’s] household benefited a lot from the struggle. Hundreds of individuals have been killed over there. We misplaced a number of navy, some buddies of mine that I served with, they have been killed in Iraq. Some have been injured.
Then you definately carry a Cheney right here — the identical household tied to the struggle effort at a time when there are two main wars taking place within the Center East and likewise Ukraine.
If you carry any person from the Cheney household in, then you definitely use rhetoric like “nation earlier than social gathering,” effectively, that is the silliest factor that I’ve ever heard.
So if Trump loses, will you have the ability to work with a Harris administration?
All I can say is, God assist us.
I am not going to consider it at this level, as a result of my religion is in God. Trump took a bullet for this nation and God has one thing deliberate for him. I am very, very optimistic he’ll win this election.
