DEARBORN, MI -- Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib says President Donald Trump is “absolutely lying” by calling her ant-Semitic, un-American, vicious and violent.

Tlaib can’t help but laugh when thinking about how Trump conjured a dark version of herself in the mind of his supporters. It’s not the version of the Detroit congresswoman Dearborn-area residents warmly embraced Thursday, who talked about the power of love while standing alongside Jewish faith leaders.

“It’s such absurdity in some ways,” Tlaib said of the president’s recent attacks. “But it is hard because it can be very painful for people to spread this image of you that is so opposite. I always say I’m a mom first, before I’m a Republican or Democrat or anything. It is painful."

Democrats representing Michigan in Congress assembled more than 100 people to the University of Michigan-Dearborn campus Thursday evening to pray and show solidarity in the face of rising threats to minority communities. Trump was referenced only in passing and never by name by speakers who said they’d rather keep party politics out of what should be a bipartisan fight against racism.

Tlaib gave her remarks toward the end of the event, but all eyes were eagerly fixed on her throughout the evening. She and the president have been waging an escalating feud that began with her pledging to “impeach the Mother****er” shortly after taking office, and more recently found Trump accusing her of hating the United States, “all Jews” and Israel, and urging her to leave the country.

“It has been his way of distracting from the fact that he’s failed as a president,” Tlaib said.

Tlaib said she’s an easy target --the first Palestinian American and first Muslim congresswoman who serves a diverse and low-income district. She said Trump singled her out along with progressive allies U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Illhan Omar, D-Minn., and Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass, due to their race and inexperience in Congress.

“We’re different,” Tlaib said. “We’re very different and very raw. We really ran in a corny way, to change the world. I want people to feel they are as equal to anyone else no matter their background."

In Congress, Tlaib said she’s focused on fighting corporate assault on working people, which has become a larger movement among progressive Democrats. She’s not surprised her aggressive nature has attracted opposition, but Tlaib said the president is stoking racial tension.

Tlaib said there’s no question that she loves her country-- she wouldn’t have ran for Congress if she didn’t.

“I, every single day when I wake up and serve my neighbors, I’m showing people I am very much as American as everyone else because I love my neighbors,” Tlaib said.

Tlaib already faced threats for being a Muslim woman, including racist phone messages left at her office by a Florida man. Tlaib doesn’t know how many she’s received, she said her staff has a collection of threatening letters that are “consistently reported” to the FBI and Capitol police.

“I worry about the threats that are coming in, but who else does this person hate and who else would they take action via violence toward,” Tlaib said. “That’s what worries me the most is some of that rhetoric from the president and what I’m getting in the mail; how that’s so connected. They actually always reference him.”

Thursdays event featured more than a dozen speakers including Muslim, Christian and Jewish faith leaders, elected officials and civil rights organizations.

Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, the state's first black man to achieve his post, said Michigan produces people who stand up to injustice.

State Senate Minority Leader Christine Grieg celebrated the diversity of Michigan's congressional delegation, noting its members include Christians, Muslims and Jews.

Carolyn Normandin, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League Michigan, warned of an increase of reported hate crimes against Jews and black people. She said white nationalist violence is a prescient threat, causing the deaths of more people in 2018 than any other year since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Normandin said white supremacist rhetoric is spreading to public schools across the state, sharing short anecdotes of nooses, swastikas and other racist imagery being discovered this year.

U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Dearborn, was credited with organizing the event. She said communities are being pitted against each other on the basis of religion, ethnicity and especially their politics.

“I’m a Catholic girl, the nuns taught me at an early age that we all are one,” Dingell said. “We are not Democrats we are not Republicans, we are Americans.”