Several attendees of a dinner in Michigan say they’re now more willing to vote for Trump this year.
Several attendees of a dinner in Michigan say they’re now more willing to vote for Trump this year.
S yrian-American community leaders from Michigan and other swing states who attended a May 21 dinner with Ric Grenell, one of former president Donald Trump’s top foreign-policy advisers, told National Review that they’re now more likely to support Trump in November.
Several of the Syrian Americans, who made up about half of the 40 or so Arab-American attendees, explained that the Biden administration’s willingness to accommodate Iran, which has worked to prop up Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, is the reason that they’re open to the Republican candidate’s overtures. A few cited reports that the Biden administration lobbied against a bill that would prohibit the U.S. from normalizing its ties with Syria.
In addition to Grenell, who often comes up as a possible Trump nominee for secretary of state, the unofficial Trump delegation to Maggiano’s Little Italy, a restaurant in Troy, Mich., included Michael Boulos — the husband of Trump’s daughter Tiffany — and his father, Massad, both of whom are Christians of Lebanese descent, and two UFC fighters, Belal Muhammad, a Palestinian, and Ali Abdelaziz, an Egyptian. Many attendees stayed after the three-hour dinner to take pictures with Muhammad.
While most coverage of the presidential race has highlighted President Biden’s vulnerabilities with Arab-American voters because of his stance on Israel, one underappreciated political dynamic stems from his administration’s accommodation of Assad and the Iranian regime. Syrian Americans make up a quietly influential demographic. According to census figures for the 2010s, over 6,400 Syrian Americans lived in the Detroit area alone. And many are furious at Biden’s Middle East policy.
“I do not deny the importance of other issues, such as what is happening in Gaza, but as a Syrian, I no longer have much luxury to work on non-Syrian issues,” said Maher Sharafeddine, a Syrian-American community leader who called Biden’s policy toward Syria “disastrous” and said after the dinner that he’s more likely to vote for Trump.
“This is a reason some of the people are turning into Trump [supporters], because the Biden administration reached out to us last election, which was a tactical move because the Democrats lost Michigan the previous election,” another attendee said. “They promised us a lot of good things on specifically confronting Iran and Syria and confronting Assad. Unfortunately, what happened was the opposite — they were pushing back against any additional sanctions. They were hampering any movements on confronting Iran and Syrian militias.”
Several of the people at the dinner said that they’re looking forward to continued engagement with people in Trump’s orbit.
“I felt it was a positive first step and it’s worth exploring,” said Yahya Basha, a radiologist with offices in Dearborn, Royal Oak, and Serling Heights who organized the dinner. He said that he’s hopeful that Trump will attend a future meeting in Michigan. Massad Boulos is already slated to attend another dinner hosted by Basha this week with several other Arab community leaders. Boulos called the planned gathering a “family affair.”
According to attendees, Grenell emphasized that he was speaking in his personal capacity and declined to make specific policy promises on behalf of the campaign. He said that his preferred approach to dealing with Syria would eventually see the removal of Assad’s government from the Arab League, but only after the resolution of the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. Grenell told the group that, at that point, the U.S. could reach a deal with Turkey and Russia, which will have been stretched thin by the war in Ukraine, to stabilize Syria and counter Iran’s presence in the country.
“While the meeting was not requested on behalf of the campaign, we share the belief that Biden’s failed Middle East policies have brought death, chaos, and war to the region,” said Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign. He added that the campaign will continue to communicate to the Democrats who voted “uncommitted” in Michigan’s Democratic presidential primary.
Discussion about Gaza didn’t take up much of the conversation, according to attendees who spoke to NR; one said that the group talked about the war for about ten minutes, while spending 20–25 minutes on Syria and Iran. Grenell emphasized the importance of squeezing Iran with sanctions to put pressure on its support of terrorism, one of them said.
They also recalled that Grenell said that the war in Gaza would never have happened if Trump had been president and claimed that Trump would have secured more deals between Israel and Arab countries. He also argued that it’s not surprising that Hamas attacked Israel after the U.S., under the Biden administration, resumed funding Iran, and that post-war economic development initiatives should follow the release of hostages and an end to Hamas’s leadership in Gaza.
After the meeting, two attendees told a reporter from NOTUS, an online publication that initially reported on the gathering, that Grenell’s answers on Gaza had alienated the crowd. But Maissa Kabbani, the co-founder of Global Justice, a U.S. nongovernmental group focused on Syria, called that a lie told by someone who intended to spread false information about the dinner.
“The meeting was very successful, and this guy’s just invading us just to leak information from that meeting to make it look like a disaster meeting,” said Kabbani, who voted for Trump in 2020 because she thought that Biden would replicate President Obama’s Syria policy. Another attendee, who preferred to remain unnamed, said it was surprising that the NOTUS article focused on Grenell’s comments on Gaza since it was not the main focus of the conversation.
“The meeting was successful, in my opinion,” said Haytham Albizem, a Philadelphia-based cardiologist and the other co-founder of Global Justice, who voted for Biden in 2020. “He calmed down any concern by the Syrian Americans and the Muslim Americans.” Albizem added that Grenell fielded questions from attendees about the 2017 executive order widely referred to as a “Muslim ban,” and that his explanation — that the policy, which ordered extreme vetting of people coming from high-risk countries, didn’t specifically target Muslims — placated the audience.
Albizem said that he’s in a chat group with a large number of other Syrian-American doctors, who are mostly interested in mobilizing against Biden. “This time is going to be different,” he said.
Grenell urged Arab Americans in Michigan to flex their political muscle by supporting Trump loudly and early. By doing that, he said, they can make Arab Americans a key demographic in every future presidential election.
“Syrian Americans care about three issues generally right now — Assad, Gaza, and the radical trans social agenda in schools,” said a Syrian-American Republican who didn’t attend the event but has advised several GOP campaigns. “They are angry at Biden on all three, so it’s between Trump and undecided. The majority don’t agree with Trump on Gaza and many other issues, and some will never come around to backing him, but strong commitments by Trump to take out Assad, Iran, and Russia in Syria could be the deciding factor for just enough of them to very well swing Michigan and Pennsylvania to Trump.”