Trump Called Out for 'Unhinged' Attack on Abdul El-Sayed After Prez Brands Michigan Senate Candidate a 'Jihadist Lunatic Who Hates Our Country'
Trump took to Truth Social to attack El-Sayed.
Oct. 12 2026, Published 12:35 p.m. ET
President Donald Trump called Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed a "Jihadist lunatic" in a post after Thursday's debate, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
Trump wrote on Truth Social at 12:02 a.m. Friday that former Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee, "completely obliterated Mohammad El-Sayed in the big debate tonight. If this was a fight, they would have stopped it."
Trump Attacks El-Sayed After Debate
Trump said Abdul El-Sayed wants to see the U.S. fail.
He continued: "Mohammad is a Jihadist lunatic who hates our Country, the Black People of Detroit, and wants to see the U.S. fail. Short on Stature, Patriotism, and Truth, Mohammed's statements have been loaded up with lies and deceit."
He closed by saying he won Michigan big and that Rogers is the man for the state.
In a post on Wednesday, he had already called El-Sayed "Mohammed," a "RADICAL Extremist," a "Terrorist Sympathizer," and compared him to streamer Hasan Piker.
Republicans Against Trump reposted what Trump said about El-Sayed.
El-Sayed Responds to Trump
El-Sayed tried to refocus the conversation back to policy.
El-Sayed responded on X by addressing the name-calling.
"He knows my name is Abdul," he wrote. "He says it every day. But he's not just attacking me. He's attacking all of us."
He said Trump was using his name and his faith to distract from prices at the pump, the grocery store and the doctor's office.
At a rally Saturday in Clarksville, Tennessee, Trump responded by saying, "Someone said his name is not Mohammed. It's Abdul. I'm the president. I can call him whatever the h--- I want. To me, he's Mohammed, and he is a radical jihadist."
Rogers and El-Sayed Had Heated Debate Thursday
Roger and El-Sayed had a heated debate on Thursday night.
During the debate on Thursday, Rogers, a former House Intelligence Committee chairman, suggested that someone in El-Sayed's family might be on a watchlist and pressed him for not issuing a statement on the third anniversary of October 7.
El-Sayed, who would be the first Muslim member of the Senate, denied any family tie to terrorism and called Rogers "a sock puppet for the Trump administration," "weak" and "cowardly."
Rogers called him a "glitchy AI chatbot" running a "con."
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El-Sayed's Background
El-Sayed has gone by Abdul since kindergarten.
El-Sayed, 41, was born Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed in Rochester Hills to Egyptian immigrant parents. He has gone by Abdul since kindergarten.
He was a Rhodes Scholar, earned a medical degree from Columbia University and a doctorate in public health from Oxford, and served as executive director of the Detroit Health Department and as director of Wayne County's Department of Health, Human and Veterans Services.
