Donald Trump compared Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed to the 9/11 attackers at a rally in Michigan on Sunday and said Democrats would let “violent anti-American terrorists” into the United States, Reuters reported, in a text republished by The Hindu.

The president told the rally he was there to keep “a jihadist, Muslim Brotherhood member from becoming a United States senator” and likened a vote against El-Sayed to the response of Flight 93 passenger Todd Beamer to the hijackers. “Twenty-five years later, Michigan needs to stand up and fight, just like Todd did, to stop a jihadist from walking into the Capitol,” he said. El-Sayed, who would be the first Muslim elected to the Senate, dismissed the accusations and at an event on Sunday night suggested hypocrisy in Trump’s emphasis on his name: “I get that the President of the United States takes personal offence to my first name”.