President Donald Trump said Monday that “jihadists” are being elected “all over the place” — trying a new, incendiary line of attack against Democrats with the midterm election just three months away.
“Well, the one thing is, we have jihadists being elected all over the place,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, without specifying who he was talking about or offering evidence of his claims.
“We have this whether it’s communism, jihadism,” Trump added.
The president has frequently cast Democrats and democratic socialists as communists, looking to portray the party as increasingly extreme headed into November — even though portrayals of even the party’s most liberal candidates as communists are far from reality.
But calling them “jihadists” is a new escalation, which Trump acknowledged in his remarks Monday, recounting that a “friend of mine called up,” and told him, “’You know, really, you should use the word jihadist because that’s what’s happening.’” The president’s escalating rhetoric comes amid broad lines of attack from others in the GOP seeking to paint Muslim candidates as anti-American.
