White nationalist politics has moved beyond demanding proof of citizenship. Now, as rhetoric at a Trump rally in Michigan made brutally clear, even a birth certificate and constitutional citizenship can be dismissed when the citizen does not fit the right’s preferred political and racial mold.

David Beamer, whose son was a passenger killed on hijacked United Flight 93 on 9/11, targeted Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed during the Sunday rally. President Donald Trump watched as Beamer contrasted El-Sayed with Republican opponent Mike Rogers.

“Mike Rogers is an American,” Beamer said. “Abdul has a birth certificate. The birth certificate says he’s a citizen of America. You know what? A birth certificate doesn’t make you an American.”

That declaration exposes the ugly premise behind the GOP attacks on El-Sayed. The argument is no longer that citizenship documents might be fraudulent, but that legal citizenship itself can be ignored if right wing political figures decide someone is insufficiently American.

Trump helped popularize racist birther conspiracy theories during Barack Obama’s presidency by questioning whether Obama was born in the United States. One right wing activist even titled a book promoting the conspiracy “Where’s The Birth Certificate?”

Obama released a standard birth certificate in 2008 in response to rumors, followed by a long form certificate in 2011. Yet Trump continued pushing the manufactured controversy rather than accepting the evidence that had supposedly been demanded.

In 2012, Trump tweeted, “An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that @BarackObama’s birth certificate is a fraud.” Trump and others on the right challenged the certificate’s authenticity several more times before he later claimed that he had “finished” the controversy.

The birther campaign was animated by bigotry, but its stated premise still treated an authentic birth certificate as a possible resolution. It therefore implicitly recognized that birth in the United States conferred constitutional rights, even while Trump and his allies spread disinformation intended to delegitimize Obama.

The rhetoric directed at El-Sayed goes further. Under this warped standard, a birth certificate is inadequate, citizenship is inadequate, and constitutional standing is inadequate because the right reserves for itself the power to decide who deserves recognition as an American.

“[El-Sayed] demonstrates with his view of what our world should look like that he’s not an American, he’s anti -American,” Beamer said. He falsely claimed that El-Sayed’s beliefs “align” with the Muslim Brotherhood, using El-Sayed’s Arab ancestry as a pretext for assigning him covert extremist beliefs.

“He has blood that’s red,” Beamer said. “However, he has chosen to remove any strain of the white and blue part in his blood. We cannot allow this man to invade and occupy our country.”

According to the United States government, white in the American flag symbolizes “purity and innocence,” while blue symbolizes “vigilance, perseverance, and justice.” Against that symbolism, Beamer’s language codes El-Sayed as inherently dangerous and casts his possible election as an “invasion.”

The attack also echoes fascistic language from the 20th century by presenting targeted people as threats to a national body that must be protected. It turns a political opponent into a supposedly foreign force, regardless of his documented citizenship or constitutional rights.

Beamer’s comments fit the broader rhetoric surrounding the race. At the same rally, Trump falsely called El-Sayed a “jihadist,” a smear he has used repeatedly, while Rogers’ first attack advertisement tried to depict left wing politicians of color as violent anarchists.

The attacks from Trump, Rogers and Beamer are not isolated from the right’s wider trajectory. The Trump administration has sought to roll back birthright citizenship and effectively allow immigration based on race, while Vice President JD Vance has promoted ethnic heritage rather than shared values as the measure of American identity.

The political project is presented as protection against a so called invasion. In practice, it seeks authority to define citizenship through racial and ideological tests, pushing past birtherism toward an openly exclusionary vision of America that treats the Constitution as merely optional.