AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González, as we turn now to Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the winner of Tuesday’s Democratic Senate primary in Michigan.

In a major blow to the Democratic establishment and AIPAC, Abdul El-Sayed won the primary despite being vastly outspent by his opponent, Congressmember Haley Stevens. Pro-Israel and pro-corporate super PACs spent over $60 million to oppose Abdul El-Sayed, a former public health official who campaigned on a platform of Medicare for All, ending military aid to Israel, and getting money out of politics. He’ll face the Trump-endorsed Republican nominee, former Congressman Mike Rogers, in November’s general election. If Dr. El-Sayed wins, he would become the first Muslim senator in the country.

At a rally in Nevada after the primary, President Trump accused Dr. El-Sayed of hating Jewish people and Israel, and said, quote “When I watch Abdul” — well, this is President Trump in his own words.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: When I watch Abdul, he’s full of [bleep].

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Abdul El-Sayed was born and raised in the Detroit area to Egyptian immigrant parents, called out Republicans on Wednesday, including his opponent Mike Rogers, after the National Republican Senatorial Committee issued a statement that referred to him by his full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed.

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: They think they want to use my whole name against me. Mike, listen, man, if you can’t say the name — it’s Abdulrahman — keep the name out your damn mouth. I’ll be happy to give you lessons.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined now from Ann Arbor, Michigan, by Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Dr. El-Sayed. Can you talk about your victory and what it means, and what it means the next day to stand with your Democratic opponents as you all came together for the general election in November?

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Amy, thank you so much for having me.

We’re honored and excited to have earned 750,000 stakes in democracy from folks across the state of Michigan who believed that our message to get money out of politics, put money in pockets, pass Medicare for All is the way forward for our state and for our country. It’s an answer to the challenges that they face.

We came through an unprecedented amount of outside spending against us, nearly $70 million, got outspent 11 to one. But the power of our message and the power of the people who carried it up and down our state, knocking 200,000 doors in the last two weeks of the campaign alone, they made the difference for us.

We have an opportunity now, though, to unite around the opportunity that unites us all, which is way bigger than any differences we might have had in the primary, which is to defeat Mike Rogers, who is, of course, a bootlicker for Trumpism and would be a rubber stamp for everything Donald Trump wants to do for the next two years, should he be elected. This is a guy who spent his time in Congress voting to raise prescription drug prices because he took over a million dollars from the pharmaceutical industry. He’s a guy who helped architect the legislation that kicked off the opioid epidemic when I was in high school. And we have to defeat him because, of course, he’s enthralled to Donald Trump. He would rubber stamp these wars that are raising our gas prices. He would rubber stamp the continued assault on our government, for which we have to now be dodging lettuce because it’s not safe. So, we have an opportunity to come together across our differences to build something that is about beating Trumpism, beating Mike Rogers, and I’m looking forward to the next 13 weeks.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Dr. El-Sayed, Medicare for All, universal healthcare, has been at the heart of your campaign. Why do you think it has resonated so much? And how — if you were to succeed and be elected to the Senate, how would you accomplish this, when it has eluded — the universal healthcare has eluded so many previous Democratic administrations in the past?

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Yeah, and thank you for the question, because I think it is at the heart of what so many people are suffering right now. There’s not a place that I go across the state where people don’t tell me, “I’m so worried about what happens if I get sick. And I’m insured. Because my deductible is, what, $6,000, $10,000, it would put me into bankruptcy,” which is why across this country we hold $225 billion in medical debt. Nearly a third of households in this country carry that debt. We don’t have to have that. What Medicare for All would be is guaranteed health insurance through the government without having to worry about a copay, a deductible, a premium. It’s there from cradle to grave. You don’t lose it if you turn 26 or get married, get divorced, get a job, lose a job, turn 65 — all ways you can lose health insurance right now. And you don’t have to worry about being in network or out of network. You are covered. That opportunity, that security is something people across my state want so deeply.

Now, we have an opportunity, I think, rather than to shy away from our biggest, boldest ideas, to carry them forward with us, to have the conversations about what’s possible in the communities where they tell us that nobody’s interested. Well, turns out people really are. I’ve been up and down the state, 110 different cities. You can go up north. You can be at a church in Detroit. You can be in Grand Rapids. People are asking, “How are you going to secure healthcare for me and my family?” Medicare for All would do just that.

Now, look, we’ve got two years under this administration while I’ll be in the U.S. Senate. And my job is to throw as much sand in the gears into the Trump administration as possible, but to use that two years as a pathway, as a guide ramp, for the next — a Democratic — president, who will get this done. And I think by going out, having the conversation, persuading around the power of ideas, that’s how we win. That’s how we won this primary. That’s how we look forward to winning the general. And I look forward to helping show a pathway forward, through Michigan, for whoever is bold enough to pick up the idea that we really can have healthcare in this country moving forward.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you’ve also campaigned against military interventions and unconditional military support for Israel and other countries. How do you feel the American electorate is moving in terms of this issue? And what would you do to shift these priorities in the spending of the federal government away from the military into what other programs?

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Well, in an era where many of us can’t afford basic things like groceries or rent or healthcare, the idea that your government is sending your tax dollars to buy bombs and tanks for foreign governments seems anathema. That money could be spent to fix your potholes, rebuild your kid’s school, that looks like it did 50 years ago. And we need that money spent here.

On top of that, we have an opportunity to remind ourselves where that kind of militarism ends up. It ends up in foreign wars we have no business fighting. You think about the consequences of this war in Iran — illegal, unjustifiable, wrong. But all it’s done is showed the ayatollahs that they have a chokehold on the world’s energy supply, and it’s raised our gas prices to nearly $5 a gallon. We have an opportunity to finally turn against that kind of militarism, which is exactly what Donald Trump said he would, but, of course, he’s taken us to I don’t know how many conflagrations in the last year alone. We need to end that.

And Mike Rogers, the guy I’m running against, he would be a check — I mean, excuse me, he would be a rubber stamp for exactly what Donald Trump wants to do. And we need a check, which is why we’re going to take him on. We’re going to show him for who he is: a corporatist who can’t wait to do the bidding of Donald Trump. And I think we can offer a real check on Trumpism in the U.S. Senate starting next year.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Dr. El-Sayed, your response to President Trump saying you hate Jewish people, the National Republican Senatorial Committee using your full name — of course, reminiscent of Barack Hussein Obama — you embracing that, and President Trump saying you’re full of —?

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Well, look, at the end of the day, when you don’t have ideas, all you have is hate. And we knew exactly what the playbook was going to be.

Here’s the reality of it: My name is not raising your gas prices. My name is not the reason we’re in an illegal war. My name is not the reason you can’t afford your healthcare. My name is not the reason that you can’t afford your rent or your insurance. Their bad ideas are. And so, if the best they’ve got against getting money out of politics, putting money in pockets, passing Medicare for All is to point to my name and say that they can’t pronounce it, then I think we’re going to have a pretty good time over the next 13 weeks prosecuting the case against a kind of politics that is corrupted, corrupting and devastating the future of our country.

We’ve got an opportunity, I think, though, to think beyond that. I think people are sick and tired of this politics of hatred. They’re sick and tired of politicians who are interested in exploiting government for their own means, which is exactly what Mike Rogers did while he was in Congress, making $14 million after he left to move to a McMansion in Florida, which is what Donald Trump is doing now. And we’re offering an alternative: a doctor who rebuilt the health department, eliminated medical debt, put Narcan in vending machines for free and, yes, happens to be named Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, if you were to win, you’d become the first Muslim ever elected to the U.S. Senate in U.S. history. Did you ever think you would be here, possibly be that first Muslim senator? And what does that mean to you?

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: I never intended to run for office. I became a doctor, because I could go 15 hours to my family’s native Egypt or 15 minutes from where I grew up, and either way, I’d cross about 10 years’ difference in life expectancy. You know, this has been a journey of public service — rebuilt the health department in the city of Detroit, led Wayne County’s Department of Health, Human and Veterans’ Services.

I’ll be honest: I don’t think that much about being the first of anything. I just want to be a really great senator for my state. But I do think about what it would mean about what our country is. You got people like Donald Trump and JD Vance and Mike Rogers, who want to define America as being smaller than she really is. I know America is big. It’s open-hearted. It is thoughtful. It wants to be that biggest, most embracing version of itself. And that’s the version, by and large, I’ve experienced as a guy named Abdul in Michigan for 41 years.

So I’m looking forward to Michiganders proving just how open-minded they are, just how big-hearted they are, just how much they care more about what I pray for rather than how I pray. And I’m looking forward to taking that and letting Michigan show Donald Trump and JD Vance who we really are.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Doctor, I wanted to ask you — AIPAC has reportedly spent more than $30 million to attempt to defeat you, in support of your opponent. Why do you — what’s your sense of why AIPAC saw you as such a threat and so necessary to defeat you?

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Yeah, AIPAC, unfortunately, has an absolutist vision about what our foreign policy ought to do. They want us to continue to send unconditional military aid, and worse, to a foreign government to do apartheid, genocide, war. And I believe in equal rights to peace, dignity and self-determination for Palestinians and Jewish Israelis alike. And it’s that Palestinian personhood part that I think they so oppose. And they wanted to make an example out of me, and we’ve made an example out of them.

And I think we have an opportunity now to move forward in a politics where we don’t allow an organization dedicated directly to making sure our foreign policy backstops the foreign policy of a foreign government, and make sure that our money is spent here, where it needs to be spent, to provide schools here and to provide good infrastructure here, to provide healthcare here for our kids, rather than being sent abroad to do the worst to other people’s kids.

AMY GOODMAN: Your race is seen as a bellwether. It not only sent shockwaves, clearly, through President Trump, as he used a four-letter word to talk about you, but the Democratic establishment. Right after you won, though, Kamala Harris sent out a message that people should support you. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee people — you know, Chuck Schumer, Gillibrand — they congratulated you. You took on the establishment. Now how do you work with it?

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED: Well, we all have the same goal, which is to defeat Mike Rogers and to offer a check to Trumpism, whatever our differences around how the Democratic Party should look. And, yes, there are some real differences. We just hashed it out for 15 months. We do know that we have to beat Trump. We do know that we have to take back the Senate. We do know that Michigan is critical for that. And I’m looking forward to figuring out how to work together to make that — make that happen. So, I’m grateful to the support that they’ve shown us since our victory, and looking forward to locking arms to do what needs to be done to take on Trump and Trumpism.

Now, look, I don’t think about this as a question about the future of a party. I think about this as the question of the future of Michiganders’ lives, and I’m focused on getting money out of politics, putting money in pockets, passing Medicare for All, which is what I intend to do when I get to the U.S. Senate. I’m looking forward to working with anybody and everybody who’s willing to help us do that to provide relief for Michiganders who are struggling right now.

AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, we want to thank you for being with us. We’re going to continue the conversation for five minutes, post it at democracynow.org. Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is Democratic Senate nominee from Michigan.

That does it for our show. I’ll be in Scotland on Tuesday and London on Wednesday. Check our website at democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.