Hamtramck mayor who backed Trump also called Saddam Hussein a 'martyr'

Hamtramck Mayor Amer Ghalib, a Yemeni immigrant and Muslim who last month made headlines for endorsing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, called Saddam Hussein a "martyr" in the past, mocked Black Lives Matter protesters and didn't always support the former president, a review of his social media posts shows.

The posts, which date back to 2017, show a future elected official not afraid to speak out on social media or label other leaders as "weak." Before he became a Trump supporter, Ghalib, who was elected mayor in 2021, once supported Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a self-declared democratic socialist who twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. Ghalib also claimed he convinced 20 others to back Sanders, who is Jewish, in the 2020 Michigan Democratic presidential primary.

"Prayers for the Jew. Don't let him down," Ghalib wrote, ending the sentence with three emojis of laughing faces. Ghalib, who posts often on Middle Eastern and U.S. politics, wrote the post in Arabic.

In other posts, he twice called Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator, a martyr. He also mocked the Black protesters reacting against the May 2020 death of George Floyd, a Black resident, at the hands of by Minneapolis police officers. Ghalib wrote the post at a time when the demonstrations turned deadly in Minneapolis.



https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2024/10/03/hamtramck-mayor-amer-ghalib-slammed-for-calling-saddam-hussein-a-martyr-backing-trump/75360765007/