ExpressLane
Verified User
Arab Americans sour on Democrats amid war in Middle East: Activist says Trump outreach has been ‘surreal’
An old adage suggests that foreign policy doesn’t decide elections.
"It’s the economy, stupid," Clinton campaign strategist James Carville famously proclaimed in the lead-up to the 1992 elections.
But this year’s nail-biter presidential election could come down, in part, to war in the Middle East – and whether Vice President Kamala Harris can recapture support from the historically Democratic Arab-American community.
And according to activists in swing states, the Trump team is seizing on Arab Americans’ sour feelings about the Biden-Harris administration.
"For Democrats, outreach is pretty null towards the grassroots," Samraa Luqman, a Dearborn-based Arab-American activist told Fox News Digital.
"The Republicans’ outreach has been like nothing I have ever seen," said Luqman, who wrote in Bernie Sanders in 2020 and is now voting for former President Donald Trump.
"The people that are surrounding the president have been in communication with grassroots organizers, local leaders, people like myself," she went on. "I'm really not somebody on the national stage. . . . And yet, here I am with access" to those like Richard Grenell, Trump’s former acting Director of National Intelligence, and Massad Boulos, father-in-law of Trump’s daughter, Tiffany.
Grenell, who may well find himself in a Cabinet-level job if Trump is elected, and Boulos, a Lebanese-American businessman, have been leading the outreach to Arab American communities in swing states and "they've gotten progressives like myself on board to say that this is the right person for the job at this time, considering the alternative."
For Luqman — who supports Medicare for all and student debt forgiveness – hers is a vote of protest more than an enthusiasm for Trump. "It's really become an issue about genocide and how to hold administrations accountable for it, simply because we cannot reward an administration for genocide."
To Luqman and Palestinian supporters in the U.S., President Joe Biden’s criticisms of Israel’s offensive campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon ring hollow when the U.S. continues to provide aid without conditions to the war effort.
Biden is a "completely owned dog to Bibi," said Luqman, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump, she said, "is not."
"Trump is a wild card, and we saw him sour on Bibi towards the end of his presidency."
"Perhaps he would say his America-first policy means that we are going to keep our billions at home," she went on. "Perhaps he would say, you know, the whole ‘peace through strength’ . . . I told you to do something, and you didn't do it, then possibly withholding the military aid would come next."
As for what Trump might do better, "It really comes down to personality."
Michigan, which Biden narrowly won in 2020, is a crucial battleground state this election. It has the second-highest population of Arab American residents – north of 300,000.
Trump won the state by just 11,000 votes in 2016 over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, and then lost the state four years later by nearly 154,000 votes to Biden.
And while Arab Americans also historically favor Democrats, new polling suggests that could change. Of likely voters in the community, Arab Americans favor Trump over Harris 46% to 42%, according to new polling by the Arab American Institute............
============================================
Harris is in BIG trouble in the Arab American community. Biden/Harris is the reason the Iranians had the money to start this war. Trump had the evil leaders of Iran too poor to finance TERRORISTS.
