Rashida Tlaib Slammed for Urging Voters to Withhold Support for Joe Biden

Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan progressive Democrat, has been slammed on social media for urging voters to withhold support for President Joe Biden in her state’s primary election.

Biden is the likely Democratic presidential nominee as he is the incumbent. He won the New Hampshire Democratic primary with 63.9 percent of the vote as a write-in candidate and the South Carolina Democratic primary by 96.2 percent.

However, Biden does face a potential challenge in the Michigan primary on February 27 with Arab and Muslim voters in the state. Arab and Muslim communities across the country and progressives in Congress, especially Tlaib, have criticized the president’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza.

Standing outside the Ford Community & Performing Arts Center in Dearborn, Michigan, Tlaib told voters in a video that it is important “to create a voting block, something that is a bullhorn to say enough is enough. We don’t want a country that supports wars and bombs and destruction. We wanna support life. We wanna stand up for every single life killed in Gaza.”

She added: “This is the way you can raise our voices. Don’t make us even more invisible. Right now, we feel completely neglected and just unseen by our government. If you want us to be louder, than come here and vote uncommitted.”

Newsweek reached out to Tlaib’s office and Biden’s campaign via email for comment.

People on social media criticized the video that has been circulating on X, formerly Twitter.

The account “Republicans against Trump” wrote Saturday: “Squad member Rep. Rashida Tlaib urges Democrats in Michigan to withhold their support for President Biden and mark ‘uncommitted”‘ on their ballots in the state’s Democratic primary. Who’s going to primary her?”

To primary a politician means to challenge the incumbent in a primary election.

Civil rights attorney Andrew C. Laufer sarcastically wrote, “That’s an amazing stance @RashidaTlaib. Have your supporters not vote or vote for the guy who will deport them. Just an amazing position.”

The general election in November will likely be between Biden and GOP frontrunner former President Donald Trump. During Trump’s term, he signed a series of travel ban executive orders starting with one called “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States” also known as the Muslim ban. The order banned travelers from countries with predominantly Muslim populations including Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Biden revoked Trump’s travel bans when he took office.

X user Christopher Webb, who labels himself as a lifelong Democrat, reacted to Tlaib’s request of Michigan voters to vote uncommitted.

“Rashida Tlaib has a 24% approval rating. Perhaps the Congresswoman should focus on her own reelection chances,” Webb wrote on Sunday.

In a Redfield and Wilton Strategies/Newsweek poll conducted between November 25 and 26, 2023, 30 percent of people in Michigan said they disapproved of Tlaib’s job performance, while 24 percent approved; 28 percent neither approved or disapproved. The poll surveyed 860 people in the state.

Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, has fought hard alongside other progressive lawmakers and pro-Palestinian activists across the country to demand a permanent ceasefire in Gaza since Israel launched its military operation in the region following Hamas’ surprise attack on October 7, 2023.

Hamas’ surprise attack killed 1,200 people in Israel and saw some 250 hostages taken, according to the Associated Press. However, over 100 hostages were released during a temporary ceasefire last year. Meanwhile, over 28,600 people in Gaza have been killed, mostly women and children, since the start of the conflict, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, the AP reported on Friday.

Biden has maintained his strong support for Israel, but has also called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to another temporary ceasefire in order to get the hostages that still remain in Gaza back home.

A coalition of Muslim Americans in critical swing states, including Michigan, launched a #AbandonBiden campaign late last year, urging voters to not reelect the president in 2024.

“The overwhelming majority of Muslims have told us and shared with us in our mosques and our community groups, they can never see themselves voting for the president in the upcoming election,” Jaylani Hussein, director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) who was not speaking on behalf of the civil rights group, told Newsweek at the time.