Progressive commentator Mehdi Hasan recently shared his thoughts on Donald Trump talking about Abdul El-Sayed.
On October 10, 2026, President Trump held a rally at F&M Bank Arena in Clarksville, Tennessee. In his speech, he addressed the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat, Abdul El-Sayed. Trump has repeatedly called him “Mohammed El-Sayed” instead, and he doubled down on why he does so during the rally. Calling him a “radical jihadist,” the president had this to say:
“I call him Mohammed. Somebody said, ‘His name isn’t Mohammed. It’s Abdul.’ I said, ‘To me, it’s Mohammed.’ I’m the president. I can call him whatever the **** I want. To me, he’s Mohammed, and he’s a radical jihadist. The guy is a jihadist. Look at his statements from two years ago, he’s a jihadist. I don’t want a jihadist as a senator from Michigan.”
Progressive commentator Mehdi Hasan, who has voiced criticism of Trump on several occasions, reacted to the clip. Calling him an “open proud racist,” he wrote this on X:
“If you support Trump, a brazen, open, proud racist, you’re probably a racist too.”
In the same rally, Donald Trump spoke about how he could supposedly say “the stupidest things” and his supporters would clap for him. He then said he doesn’t say such things, only “things of common sense.” He said:
“It’s amazing… I could say the stupidest things, and you’d clap like, ‘Oh I love you so much.’ But we don’t say the stupidest things, we say things of common sense… We probably are mostly conservative, but it’s not really conservative, it’s things of common sense. We wanna have a border, we wanna have low taxes.”
Mehdi Hasan reacted to Trump’s comments and had this to say on X:
“When he’s right, he’s right.”
Also read: We Are in a Very Dark Place as a Country: Mehdi Hasan Reacts to Donald Trump’s Comments on Letitia James
I’m Abhishek Sharma, an author at TigerJek.com. I enjoy exploring games, testing different strategies, and turning what I learn into clear, useful guides. My goal is to help players understand the game better and improve without the usual confusion.
