Trump Posted a Side-by-Side of Himself and a Muslim Senate Candidate. Every Mom in America Should Be Furious.

So let me get this straight. The President of the United States, a man with a gold-plated toilet and a wife who reportedly won’t hold his hand in public, spent his Saturday evening making a meme. A meme. The man who has the nuclear codes sat down and photoshopped himself and Melania in formal dinner wear next to a picture of Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and his wife Sarah Jukaku eating pancakes in a diner, slapped the words “Two VERY DIFFERENT Americas” on top, and hit post.

That’s what the leader of the free world did with his weekend. My nine-year-old makes better content on her Chromebook.

And here’s the part that made me set my coffee down. Trump didn’t just post the picture. He used El-Sayed’s full birth name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, instead of the name the man actually goes by. Dawud Walid from CAIR Michigan called it exactly what it is: a tactic to say “look, this guy is outside what we’d consider normative America.” I’ve seen this playbook before. We all have. You take a good man, a doctor, a father, someone who actually goes to work and comes home and eats pancakes with his wife, and you make him sound scary by using his whole name like he’s on a no-fly list.

I’m a mom of four. I do my own research. And I can see with my own two eyes what this is.

Shealeah Craighead (Public domain) via Wikimedia Commons

El-Sayed went on CNN and handled it better than any of us would have. He didn’t rage. He didn’t sputter. He said, yes, we do have two different visions of America. Donald Trump’s vision is the one you’re living in right now. Can you afford your gas? Can you afford your groceries? Do you believe, when you look in your children’s eyes, that they’re going to have a better future than you did?

I’ll wait while that sinks in. Because I looked at my grocery receipt last Tuesday and nearly cried. I’m not exaggerating. Nearly cried. In the checkout line at Kroger. Over eggs.

Then El-Sayed delivered the line that probably made Trump throw his phone. “Sarah and I like each other. I don’t know about the first lady and the president, but from what I’ve heard, it’s a bit of a rocky road.” He said that on national television with a straight face. The man ate pancakes with his wife and somehow that became a more compelling image of American family life than anything Trump has produced in four years of staged photo ops.

CAIR’s national director, Nihad Awad, called the post “not just an attack on American Muslims, but on the idea of America itself.” Nazita Lajevardi, a political science professor at the University of Michigan, pointed out that El-Sayed and his wife just look like “a happy, relaxed couple” in the photo Trump tried to weaponize. She’s right. I saw the picture. They look like people I’d sit next to at a school potluck. They look normal. They look kind.

Conlan Houston (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia Commons

Trump looks like a man who hasn’t been touched by another human being without a contract since 1985.

Here’s what burns me up. This man has the audacity to post about who belongs in America while the actual Americans, the ones packing lunches and carpooling and trying to figure out if they can afford both new shoes and the electric bill this month, are drowning. He’s not coming for your kids, your money, and your freedom with policy. He’s coming for them with distraction. Post a racist meme, get everyone yelling about that, and maybe nobody notices the price of milk went up again.

I noticed. We all noticed. And Abdul El-Sayed noticed too, standing in a diner with his wife, eating pancakes, looking more like the America I live in than anything that man has ever posted.