I want to talk to you about an American heroine named Haley Stevens. Haley Stevens was running against Abdul Al-Sayed in the Democratic primary for the Senate seat in Michigan. Abdul Al-Sayed benefited from an attack ad which blamed aid to Israel for rising food prices.

He didn’t make the ad. He benefited from it. He didn’t repudiate it.

Al-Sayed won by a narrow margin. Haley Stevens went on to endorse Mike Rogers, the Republican. She crossed parties.

That is huge in and of itself, but it’s even more significant in light of the following tweet. Wajahat Ali, a supporter of Al-Sayed, said that Tuesday would be a watershed moment. He tweeted that if Al-Sayed did not win, the fire will rise.

Those were his words. And when many, many people pushed back on that, he said, oh, oh, oh, it’s political and cultural. What we are facing is not a threat from Islam.

It is not a threat from Democrats. What it is, is a threat from tyrants. Tyrants who hide behind all different religions and all different excuses.

But this one is especially pernicious because Wajahat Ali explicitly ties his radicalism to Islam. In his tweets, which I reviewed last night, he says the Republicans are against Muslims. That’s not true.

The issue is national security. It is the same national security regardless of what religion is involved. But when people try to take a political side and call it religion and call the religion extremism, that is a very toxic brew.

And so I admire Haley Stevens tremendously for taking a stand. She’s a great American. Thank you, Haley.