President Trump has labeled America’s Democratic candidates “jihadists” in inflammatory remarks from the Oval Office.
Published August 11, 2026
President Donald Trump has described Democratic midterm candidates as “jihadists,” in an apparent reference to Muslim Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who won the party’s nomination in last week’s Michigan primary.
The statement accelerates a growing wave of Islamophobic rhetoric among Republican lawmakers and elected officials seeking to restrict voting ahead of November’s midterm elections.
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“Jihadists are being elected everywhere, whether it’s communist (or) jihadism,” President Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. “A friend called me and said, ‘You should use the word jihadist.’ That’s what’s happening now. If you look at what’s happening in other countries, I’m not sure that’s the way we want to live.”
President Trump also launched another fierce attack on the more than 260,000 people of Somali descent in the United States. He called them “not smart” and said they had “no aptitude” to “teach us how to run a country” and “nothing will go right.”
Edward Ahmed Mitchell, national vice president of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a U.S. Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, said President Trump’s hateful anti-Muslim rhetoric “puts a target on the backs of Muslim elected officials across the country.”
The president declined to name individual candidates, but hours later focused attention on El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian immigrants. The president shared a photo on Truth Social showing the Democratic candidate positioned in front of a rally featuring two women wearing headscarves, with the caption, “They’re after your home and your belongings.”
Trump also directly targeted El-Sayed’s victory last week, calling him a “Jew-hater” and “Israel-hater” who brings “filth, crime, death, destruction, and embarrassment.”
Several other Republicans also stepped up their anti-Muslim rhetoric in the wake of El-Sayed’s victory, parroting statements that Muslims do not belong in American society. South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace claimed on social media that “every single Muslim holding public office in the United States is a Trojan horse and a threat to both our national security and our country.”
Meanwhile, Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville called El-Sayed a “terrorist” and wrote on social media, “Abdurrahman Mohamed El-Sayed is a radical Islamist.”
The outrage comes just two days after President Trump shared a social media post comparing a photo of himself and first lady Melania Trump to a photo of El-Sayed and his wife, psychiatrist Dr. Sarah Zukak. The image was captioned: “Two very different Americas.”
Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union show with host Jake Tapper on Sunday night, the Democratic Senate candidate shot back, saying, “Sarah and I actually like each other,” adding, “I don’t know about the first lady and the president, but from what I’ve heard, it’s a little bit of a rocky road.”
With less than 90 days left until the long-awaited midterm elections are decided, and all 435 House seats and 34 Senate seats up for grabs, the Democratic Party faces an ideological divide between moderate leaders and victorious Democratic Progressives, some of whom are increasingly characterized as a danger to the entire national security establishment in Washington.
“The people don’t want radical lunatics running our country,” Trump said Monday, “and we accept that.”
