Republican presidential nominee and former US President Donald Trump points to his ear as he speaks at the Economic Club of New York in New York City, Sept. 5, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

The mayor of the only Muslim-majority city in the United States endorsed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump over the weekend, potentially boosting the former US president’s chances of winning the critical swing state of Michigan this November.

Amer Ghalib, mayor of Hamtramck, Michigan, released a statement on Facebook on Sunday, praising Trump’s character and urging his residents to vote for the former president on Election Day. Ghalib also posted a photo of himself standing alongside Trump, claiming that the pair met in person just days before. 

“I believe he is the right choice for this critical time,” Ghalib said of Trump, praising him as a “man of principles.”

“I’ll not regret my decision no matter what the outcome would be, and I’m ready to face the consequences,” Ghalib added. 

The mayor told The Detroit News that Trump was already familiar with him prior to the sit-down. 

“He knew a lot about me before the meeting,” Ghalib told the outlet. 

“We talked about various topics including the debates, the polls updates, the statistics of votes in Michigan and Wayne County, the Arab American concerns and the Yemeni Americans in particular. We also talked about the situation in Yemen,” the mayor continued.

The mayor added that during their private 20-minute meeting, Trump asked for an endorsement from him as he seeks to win the presidency and defeat Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. 

“He asked me if I can endorse him and ask people to vote for him? I told him: ‘I’m here to talk about that and how we can make it happen,'” the mayor said. “I then handed him an official letter with some details about our concerns and to invite him to come to Hamtramck if possible.”

Ghalib did not specify whether he and Trump discussed the ongoing war in Gaza or placing an arms embargo on Israel, a demand that anti-Israel activists have made of Harris. 

Ghalib has a history of making racist and antisemitic statements online. He liked comments on social media that referred  to African Americans as “animalistic” and “subhuman.” He also condemned Arab leaders as being covert “Jews.”

In a 2021 Facebook post defending Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, Ghalib told his Arab American followers to compare Trump with “the leaders of your countries, who are willing to become Jewish if the president is Jewish and to abandon all national and religious reproach if ordered by the directorial dictator!”

Nonetheless, the mayor’s endorsement could prove to be an asset for Trump as he continues to spar with Harris for votes in the hotly-contested swing state of Michigan. 

Moreover, many Arab American activists have expressed disillusionment and anger with Harris over her refusal to adopt hardline anti-Israel stances. The “Uncommitted movement” — a coalition of Democratic delegates opposed to the Jewish state’s defensive military operations in Gaza — issued a statement last week announcing that the group would not endorse a candidate for the 2024 presidential election. The group criticized Harris for not agreeing to withhold weapons from Israel and slammed the Democratic National Convention (DNC) for not allowing a Palestinian-American speaker on the main-stage of the event. 

On the polling front, Harris has also struggled to coalesce the Arab American vote, an issue that could potentially puncture her chances of winning November’s election. Recent polls suggest that Jill Stein, the presidential nominee for the Green Party, holds a staggering lead over Harris among Arab American voters in Michigan. Stein, a Jewish woman, has repeatedly accused Israel of committing a “genocide” in Gaza and has defended Hamas’s slaughter of roughly 1,200 people on Oct. 7 as an act of “self-defense.”