US Muslim leaders who supported Republican Donald Trump to protest against the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza and attacks on Lebanon have been deeply disappointed by his cabinet picks, they tell Reuters.
“Trump won because of us and we’re not happy with his Secretary of State pick and others,” says Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump. Muslim support for Trump helped him win Michigan and may have factored into other swing state wins, strategists believe.
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Trump picked Republican senator Marco Rubio, a staunch supporter of Israel for Secretary of State. Rubio said earlier this year he would not call for a ceasefire in Gaza, and that he believed Israel should destroy “every element” of Hamas. “These people are vicious animals,” he adds.
Trump also nominated Mike Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and staunch pro-Israel conservative who backs Israeli occupation of the West Bank and has called a two-state solution “unworkable,” as the next ambassador to Israel.
He has picked Republican Representative Elise Stefanik, who called the UN a “cesspool of antisemitism” for its condemnation of deaths in Gaza, to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations.
Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network (AMEEN), says Muslim voters had hoped Trump would choose cabinet officials who work toward peace, and there was no sign of that.
“We are very disappointed,” he said. “It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the side of President Trump, to the pro-peace and anti-war movement.”
Nazarko says the community would continue pressing to make its voices heard after rallying votes to help Trump win. “At least we’re on the map.”
Rola Makki, the Lebanese American, Muslim vice chair for outreach of the Michigan Republican Party, shrugs off the criticism.
“I don’t think everyone’s going to be happy with every appointment Trump makes, but the outcome is what matters,” she says. “I do know that Trump wants peace, and what people need to realize is that there’s 50,000 dead Palestinians and 3,000 dead Lebanese, and that’s happened during the current administration.”