US President Donald Trump has sparked backlash after targeting Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and his wife, psychiatrist Sarah Jukaku, in a social media post critics described as Islamophobic.
Trump shared a side-by-side graphic featuring a photo of himself with First Lady Melania Trump alongside an image of El-Sayed with Jukaku, who wears a hijab. The graphic was captioned, “Two VERY DIFFERENT America’s.”
The post also contained a grammatical error, using the possessive “America’s” instead of the plural “Americas.” Trump did not provide any further explanation of what he intended the comparison to convey.
Critics accused the president of deliberately drawing attention to El-Sayed and Jukaku’s Muslim and Arab backgrounds, with some describing the post as an example of Islamophobic rhetoric.
El-Sayed, who is campaigning for a US Senate seat in Michigan, responded to Trump’s post during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.
“Yeah, he’s right,” El-Sayed said when asked about the graphic.
He then appeared to turn the comparison back on Trump and Melania, joking about his own relationship with Jukaku.
Sarah and I actually like each other. I don’t know about the first lady and the president, but from what I’ve heard, it’s a bit of a rocky road,
The exchange comes as El-Sayed has faced a series of attacks from Trump and his allies during his Senate campaign. Some of the president’s previous remarks have included profanity, false claims and comments critics have condemned as Islamophobic.
During a speech in Las Vegas, Trump also attacked El-Sayed as part of what he described as a wave of “communists” who would bring “squalor” and “death” to the United States.
El-Sayed, the son of Egyptian immigrants, has emerged as a prominent progressive voice in Michigan and has made his Arab-American and Muslim identity part of a broader conversation around representation in US politics.
Trump’s latest post has once again placed that identity at the centre of the political debate, while El-Sayed’s response has drawn attention for turning the president’s personal attack into a pointed joke about his own marriage.
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