Dearborn Gets a Lesson

Dearborn, Michigan, has been in the news a great deal in the past weeks. The city, named for Henry Dearborn, Thomas Jefferson’s secretary of war, has a rich history, dating from its designation as a federal arsenal in 1833, to being home to the massive River Rouge auto plant, built for Henry Ford’s burgeoning leviathan in 1917, to its being named world headquarters of the Ford Motor Company after its founder’s death in 1947.

Dearborn and Ford used to be synonymous, but now Dearborn’s most newsworthy feature is that it was the first majority Arab American city in the United States.

As far back as the 1920s, as its immigrant population grew, Dearborn, as was the case with many such communities, gradually became a reliable Democratic bastion, its residents drawn both to the party’s liberal social welfare policies and its record of supporting racial, ethnic, and then gender minorities. In the previous decade, the city “fought back against Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban and other policies that discriminated against refugees, migrants, and Muslims by building alliances with Democrats and engaging the broadening civil rights coalition, represented by groups such as Black Lives Matter and the Women’s March.”

That all ended in November 2024.

Infuriated by what they perceived as the Biden administration’s support of the wanton slaughter in Gaza, they abandoned the Democrats and “Genocide Joe”—who was not even on the ballot—and voted by 43-36% for Donald Trump. Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who also tilted against the Democrats—as usual—got a whopping 18%, de facto votes for Trump.

Many of Trump’s Arab American converts considered theirs a “vote of conscience”; some chose Republicans merely as a protest; others, including a number of prominent clerics and civic leaders, did so on pragmatic grounds. Conscience, protest vote, or on merit, they all came down to one incredible conclusion.

That Trump would be better. For them. For Gaza. For Muslims. For Palestine.

What then, were their reactions to Trump’s suggestion, not two weeks into his term, that Gaza be essentially clear-cut and then rebuilt as the “Mediterranean Riviera,” while its current two million residents were shipped off to Egypt or Jordan, leaving the area almost certainly to Israel and the Jews? Did they become aghast at what Dearborn’s mayor described as “ethnic cleansing,” and bemoan their decision to vote for a man who, in the end, acted totally predictably?

Some did. Many did not.

Quite a few doubled down, defended their vote, and said they would do it again. Hudhayfah Ahmad, a spokesperson for the Abandon Harris campaign, said that while Trump’s statements were “abhorrent, grotesque, and alarming,” he still believed “electing Kamala Harris would have been worse.” Bishara Bahbah, “a prominent Trump supporter,” insisted Trump “wants to see peace in the Middle East that satisfies all parties,” and that Trump was speaking “hypothetically rather than realistically” about removing Gazans.

Some hid behind the potted plant. Two local mayors, Dearborn Heights’s Bill Bazzi and Hamtramck’s Amer Ghalib, who had campaigned for and with Trump, “did not respond to multiple requests for comment.”

On the other side, Osama Siblani, editor of Dearborn’s Arab American News, said that people in Dearborn are responding “with extreme anger and disappointment with this president who lied to this community to steal some of their votes,” and that Trump was “acting like a leader of a gangster group and not the most powerful nation in the world. Disgrace.”

But wait a minute! Disappointment? Anger? Surprise that Trump lied? What planet have these people been living on? Trump has lied his entire life, betrayed even those closest to him, and cared for no one except himself—not his wives, not his blood relatives, not even his children—unless they reduced themselves to total obsequiousness. And, of course, helped him make money.

Sorry, but you cannot get angry at someone who acts in character, only at yourself for believing he or she this one time would not.

In the classic film Citizen Kane, there is a scene in which Kane refuses to abandon his run for governor after learning that details of his extramarital affair will be made public. Kane growls that no one was going to “rob him of the love of the people of this state.” His antagonist, political boss Jim Gettys, who had exposed the affair, is stunned, since the scandal means certain defeat for Kane. (This was 1941 after all.) Gettys says to Kane, “With anyone else, I’d say it would be a lesson to you. But you’re gonna need more than one lesson…and you’re gonna get more than one lesson.”

For the sake of a nation that has embarked on a perilous road that could well lead to fascism, let us hope that for Arab Americans and demographics like them who fell for Trump’s ludicrous sales pitch—Blacks, Latinos, and young people especially—one lesson will be enough.

There is another key group for whom a vote for Trump might not turn out as they expected, this one generally thought of as far savvier than the proverbial person on the street.

Financial professionals.

Trump’s first two weeks have been extremely disquieting, although it has not yet been reflected in the markets. While a return to laissez-faire holds broad promise for the profit motive, that Trump was actually serious about tariffs seemed surprising to many. They are lucky that both Canada and Mexico backed Trump down, but also gave him an out, the ability to claim he won, by promising to send more “front line personnel” to their borders. Anyone who believes either country will invest substantial resources to placate Trump is a good potential customer for Trump Bibles. But it does give Trump the opportunity to back out of the tariffs by saying they did.

Far more significant is that for the second month in a row, consumer sentiment fell sharply, this time by about 5%, with inflation expectations ticking up one full percent, an occurrence that is “very rare” according to the economist who heads the survey. Perhaps even more of a barometer is the pessimistic tone of the publication in which these results were reported—the Wall Street Journal. The Journal is also on record with calling the Trump tariffs “the dumbest trade war ever,” and their editorial board has been sharply critical of Trump for a number of his early-term initiatives.

How Trump’s economic policies will play out is far from assured, but some of those the Journal quoted are not optimistic. One man from Texas, a Trump voter, decried the chaos and said he “has already cut back.”

There might be a lesson upcoming for him as well.