President Donald Trump said on Truth Social early Friday that Republican Mike Rogers “completely obliterated Mohammad El-Sayed” in Thursday’s Michigan Senate debate, mockingly misnaming the Democratic candidate and calling him “a Jihadist lunatic.”
Trump wrote that if the debate “was a fight they would have stopped it.” He also said Abdul El-Sayed “hates our Country, the Black People of Detroit, and wants to see the U.S. fail.” The post offered no evidence for those claims.
El-Sayed goes by Abdul, though his legal name is Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed. Trump referred to him as Mohammad and Mohammed in his post. El-Sayed has previously accused Trump of using his name and Muslim faith to distract from living costs.
Trump’s attacks on El-Sayed have escalated in recent months. The president called him a “Communist loser who hates Jews and Israel” in August and a “communist lunatic” and a “conman” in a Sept. 18 Rogers endorsement.
Overnight Wednesday, Trump called El-Sayed a "RADICAL Extremist, Terrorist Sympathizer."
Friday’s post added a new unsupported claim about El-Sayed’s views regarding Black Detroiters. Trump himself has a record of criticizing cities with Democratic leadership and large Black populations, including Detroit. Campaigning in the city in 2024, Trump said: “Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president,” referring to then vice president Kamala Harris.
Thursday’s debate between El-Sayed and Rogers “quickly devolved into personal attacks,” according to Fox News. CBS said the candidates “tossed insults across the stage in nearly every exchange.”
Rogers alleged during the debate that El-Sayed had accepted money from groups he linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and from people he said supported Hamas, Hezbollah and al Qaeda. El-Sayed said he had condemned such groups and accused Rogers of turning the issue into political theater.
MIRS, the Michigan Information & Research Service, said it sought evidence of El-Sayed’s connections to people linked with terrorist groups from Rogers and his campaign after the debate, but did not hear back. MIRS also asked El-Sayed why he didn’t directly dispute Rogers’ claims: “At the end of the day, again, this is about trying to point to somebody whose name is different to make all kinds of hearsay accusations that are just not worth the dignity of a response,” El-Sayed said.
In a separate Thursday night post, Trump posted an unsourced Truth Social graphic claiming to show how many days recent presidential administrations have seen crude oil prices above $100. According to the graphic, Trump had a lower number of days with a price above that threshold than either President Barack Obama or Joe Biden.
“The Dumocrats are Scammers. These are the real FACTS!!!” he wrote. The graphic did not say whether it counted Brent or West Texas Intermediate crude, closing or intraday prices, or trading days versus calendar days, so the exact figures in the graphic could not be immediately verified.
From March through September, Trump repeatedly said oil or gasoline prices would fall soon. That timetable has slipped from a quick end to the war, to a June deal, to a period after the Nov. 3 midterms.
On March 8, he wrote that short-term oil prices would “drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over.” On April 16, he said that once the Strait of Hormuz reopened, “your oil price will go down to lower than what it was before.” In May and June, he forecast “a gusher of oil,” said $1.85 gas would return “very soon,” and, while announcing a since-abandoned Iran deal, wrote, “Let the oil flow!”