WARREN, Mich. — UFC fighters Justin Gaethje, Beneil Dariush and Henry Cejudo stepped into the political ring last week, urging a crowd of Arab-American voters in swing-state Michigan to cast their ballots for GOP heavyweight Donald Trump.
Their selling point to clinch support for Trump? He’ll fight for peace in the Middle East.
The newly minted Conservative Middle Eastern political-action committee, which seeks to register such voters Republican, sponsored the event in coordination with former Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell, who’s been heavily involved in Trump world’s efforts to win over Michigan’s sizable Arab-American population.
The UFC trio became involved with campaign outreach via their manager, Ali Abdelaziz, who is a close friend of both Trump and Grenell.
The venue was a dazzling Arab banquet hall in the greater Detroit area, the epicenter of the fight for Arab-American and Muslim votes this election cycle.
One by one, the star fighters took the stage to make their case for the former president to about 50 attendees.
“I do get punched in the head for a living, so I have written some words,” joked Gaethje, a lightweight fighter famous for his bloody five-round battles.
“I think we’re definitely in the championship rounds, three weeks to go of this fight for America,” he said before urging attendees to vote for Trump.
Next up, Olympic gold medalist and former UFC champion Cejudo told the mostly Arab-American crowd that as the son of Mexican immigrants, he related to their experiences as newer and first-generation Americans.
Wearing a “Trump For Peace” T-shirt, Cejudo told the crowd: “I stand here as a Latino-American — or better yet an American — so hopefully I can make a change with people that come from my background, people that have come from the same circumstances.”
The most passionate speaker was Dariush, a lightweight fighter and Assyrian Christian who was born in Iran.
He forged a strong connection with the crowd, which was comprised of many Chaldeans, another Christian minority group from the Middle East that’s suffered from the Islamic State’s rise and other conflicts in the region.
“Assyrians and Chaldeans are brothers,” he said before making his case for Trump.
“I saw the things he did in the Middle East, where he stopped ISIS, where he stopped bombing just random people like [former President Barack] Obama was doing,” Dariush said.
He also argued Trump broke the mold of the hawkish, old-guard Republican Party in favor of a new kind of foreign policy.
“He made me realize something about the government — not just over there there’s extremists, there’s extremists on our side, too. And they love war. War is profitable to them.”
This line resonated with Rana Salem, 36, a Chaldean American from Sterling Heights and president of Nineveh Rising, a charity that provides aid to Christian Iraqis.
“Most of my community can’t stand [former President George W.] Bush. I mean, he destroyed our country— our other country. America’s our country. But Trump ended ISIS just like Beneil said,” she told The Post.
After his speech, Dariush told The Post protecting the people from his native region is a top political priority for him, second only to fighting for his family in the United States.
“For me, peace abroad, it’s probably like second to my own family at home. I want peace for my family. I want prosperity for my family at home. But to forget about those people?”
Abdelaziz, the Egyptian-born mixed-martial-arts manager who brought this retinue of fighters, was just as outspoken about foreign policy.
Addressing the crowd, he apologized for his accent and nervousness before he spoke on the carnage in the Middle East.
“I don’t care if you’re Jewish, you’re Muslim, you’re Christian — people are dying,” he said. “Now do you really miss President Trump? Because in four years he created the Abraham Accords. Maybe it was not perfect, people, but nobody died.”
“I think Donald Trump brought four years of peace,” Abdelaziz said after his remarks in an exclusive interview with The Post.
“Now you see the whole world has war: in Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, now Iran. The whole world is going crazy because I don’t think the people respect the leadership of the United States right now.”
Also in attendance was Ali Aljahmi, 19, a Yemeni American who helps run his family’s restaurant in Dearborn. He went so far as to tweet his endorsement, believing Trump will end the end the Israel-Hamas war.
Speaking to The Post in the banquet hall, Aljahmi had few kind words for the Biden-Harris administration.
“Kamala Harris, she’s been the vice president for four years. She sees what’s going on in Palestine. She sees what’s going on in Iraq. She sees what’s going on in the Middle East. And I believe the Dearborn community and the Michigan Arab community do not support Biden,” he said before offering his view of the Gaza situation.
“You see children with no heads, no nothing, and they’re supporting that genocide. It is a genocide, and free Palestine from the river to the sea,” he continued. “Let me tell you something, Donald Trump is a peacemaker.”
Arab-American activist Oubai Shahbandar, who moderated the event, told The Post he believes these outreach efforts to Michigan’s Middle Eastern community have contributed to Trump’s improved numbers in the state.
“You can draw a direct correlation with the feedback that we’re getting from all the people that are showing up to the impact on the polls. Obviously, Kamala does a lot of this work for us, but we’re capitalizing on it,” he said.
Trump and Harris are tied in the Wolverine State, per Trafalgar Group’s just-released survey.
