President Donald Trump doubled down on his “Mohammed” remarks at a Georgia campaign rally, telling supporters he took heat for the name and does not care what critics say.
Speaking Friday inside a hangar at Dalton Municipal Airport, Trump reached for the name again in a joke about Middle Eastern names and made clear he would not retreat.
The Daily Caller reported that the president tied the line to earlier criticism and asserted his right to speak as he chooses.
“You know, I took a lot of heat for calling him Mohammed,” Trump told the crowd. “I don’t care. I’m the president of the United States. I can call you whatever the h*** I want. I can call you whatever I want, Mohammed.”
"I don’t care. I’m the president of the United States. I can call you whatever the h*** I want. I can call you whatever I want, Mohammed."
CSPAN posted video of the moment the next day, underscoring the same point in the clip shared from the rally.
The Georgia lines did not appear in a vacuum. Nine days before the Dalton rally, Trump went after Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed on Truth Social.
He called the candidate “Mohammed El-Sayed” and branded him a “RADICAL Extremist, Terrorist Sympathizer” who “goes back to the days of the Jihad.” The post landed the night before El-Sayed’s first debate with Republican Mike Rogers.
El-Sayed, a Muslim former health official born in Michigan to Egyptian immigrant parents, answered the next morning on X. He said Trump knows his real name and is using faith as a political weapon.
"He knows my name is Abdul. He says it everyday. But he’s not just attacking me. He’s attacking all of us. He thinks so low of us. He thinks he can use my name and my faith to distract us from the suffering his policies are inflicting on us at the pump, at the grocery store, and at the doctor’s office. He thinks we don’t know any better. It’s time for change."
That is the frame El-Sayed chose: personal grievance and policy blame. Trump’s frame is different. He treats the name fight as noise and refuses to yield the microphone.
El-Sayed is running for the seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters. He faces Rogers, who holds Trump’s endorsement.
The two already met in a contentious first debate Oct. 8 in Grand Rapids. They are scheduled to meet again Oct. 21. El-Sayed has trailed in advertising money by close to two-to-one.
Trump’s intervention puts national attention on a race Democrats hoped to keep local. It also forces El-Sayed to spend time on identity claims instead of the economic argument he prefers.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the president’s language bigoted. Muslim advocacy groups have long accused Trump of demeaning their communities.
A report this year from the Council on American-Islamic Relations linked rising anti-Muslim sentiment partly to Trump’s immigration enforcement, according to accounts carried in the coverage.
None of that changed Trump’s approach in Dalton. He named the heat, dismissed it, and repeated the word on stage anyway.
The sequence is simple. Trump used a pointed label on Truth Social. El-Sayed answered with a faith-and-suffering message. Critics labeled the language bigoted. Trump then told a Georgia crowd he can call people what he wants because he is president.
Political opponents want the fight to stay on tone and identity. Trump keeps dragging it back to his right to speak without permission. Voters in Michigan will decide whether El-Sayed’s offense strategy or Rogers’s Trump-backed campaign carries the open seat.
The next debate is days away. The name fight is already on the record.
Presidents who flinch at every manufactured outrage teach the press and the left they own the dictionary. Trump is not flinching.
