US Press
Trump calls Democratic nominees jihadists and disparages Somali immigrants
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that "jihadists" and communists are winning Democratic primaries across the United States, in remarks the New York Times reported as an escalation of anti-Muslim campaigning three months before the midterm elections.
Trump described where the word came from. "A friend of mine called up, and he said, 'You should use the word jihadist, because that's what's happening,'" he said.
He then turned to immigrants from one country by name. "They come from other failed countries, and they come here, and they tell us how to run our country," he said. "They come from, let's say, as an example, Somalia."
"And they're not smart. They have no aptitude. They have nothing going. And they're telling us how to run our country."
Trump named no Somali-born officeholder in those remarks. He has repeatedly attacked Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who arrived in the United States as a child refugee and is a naturalised citizen, and in recent weeks Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, who would be the first Muslim elected to the Senate.
For Palestinian and Arab Americans the line matters beyond the insult. The same candidates Trump is describing this way are the ones campaigning openly on arms conditions and Palestinian statehood, and the vocabulary now being aimed at them is the vocabulary that has policed that argument in Washington for a generation.
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