President Donald Trump's approval rating stood at 33% in the latest CNN poll of polls, three weeks before the November 3 midterm election. Against that backdrop, Trump and Vice President JD Vance have turned to personal, often scorching attacks on Democratic candidates. Critics call the strategy bigoted; supporters would likely call it hardball politics in a polarized age.
The Rhetoric on the Trail
Trump mocked the name of Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and called him a "jihadist." Speaking in Tennessee on Saturday, he said, "I call him Mohammed." He added: "Somebody said, 'His name isn't Mohammed' I'm the president, I can call him whatever the hell I want." On Monday night in Ohio, he went further: "He's a jihadist."
Vance, for his part, joked on Tuesday in a way that implied Texas Democrat James Talarico is gay. He also called Talarico a "freak." Trump has repeatedly claimed Talarico, the Democratic Senate nominee, is a vegan who doesn't fit the carnivorous Lone Star State. Talarico now often gets photographed with a plate of meat. Some barbs land with a smile, giving both men room to call them rough-and-tumble campaigning.
Republicans' own critics aren't buying that. They say attacks on a person's race, faith, appearance or manner don't become acceptable because of how they're delivered.
The Omar Search
The sharpest escalation came after federal officials searched the home of Somali-born Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar on Monday. The Department of Justice said it conducted an enforcement operation at her home. Omar, who is running for reelection, said Trump had smeared her for years and was now targeting her as a political enemy. Independent observers couldn't yet verify evidence or accusations against her.
Trump questioned whether Omar had constitutional rights as a naturalized citizen "from one of the worst countries anywhere on the planet." The remark intensified concerns that he was using executive power to target a political foe. It's a serious charge, and the Justice Department will need to answer what prompted the search and what legal basis supported it.
In Ohio, Trump said Omar "comes in from a country without laws, without police, without military, without — all they do is shoot each other." He added: "They come into the United States of America and they tell us how to run our country. We're not going to stand for it. They drive up taxes. They drive up healthcare costs, insurance costs, childcare costs."
The administration says Minnesota's Somali community includes violent criminals and widespread fraud centered in day care centers. Somali leaders say violent criminals make up a tiny minority and Republicans are maligning the community without justification. Minnesota welcomed tens of thousands of Somalis in the early 1990s after their East African country collapsed into violence.
The Pocketbook Backdrop
Polls showed majorities of Americans blamed Trump's decisions for worsening their struggles with the high costs of food, housing, gasoline and diesel. Trump and Vance have also visited red states where Republicans hadn't expected to be fighting this late. El-Sayed argued that the name-calling distracts from exactly that. "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 wrote on X.
The Texas Senate race adds another wrinkle. Vance's "freak" remark appeared aimed at shifting attention from the struggling, scandal-plagued GOP nominee, Attorney General Ken Paxton, whom Trump personally selected for the seat. El-Sayed and Talarico are both in races expected to go down to the wire.
The Defense, and the Double Standard Argument
Trump's aides deny that he's racist or uses racist rhetoric. They point to his events marking occasions such as Black History Month and his increased support among minority voters in the 2024 election. In February, then-White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt criticized "radical Democrats throughout the years who have accused this president falsely of being a racist."
Many Republican voters also allege a double standard. They say Democrats use demeaning language about conservatives and Trump voters, and some embraced Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables" line as a badge of honor. Some senior Democrats have openly called Trump a fascist. Leaders in both parties commonly try to disqualify rivals they can't beat on policy.
Republicans have also drawn attention to El-Sayed's claim, made shortly after the October 7 attacks, that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. Many American Jews, including Democratic voters, object to the term. The third anniversary of those attacks, which killed more than 1,200 people, mostly Israelis, has just passed.
Why This Matters:
With three weeks left, the fight over tone is crowding out the fight over results. Majorities of voters told pollsters they blame the president's decisions for higher food, housing and fuel costs. That's a problem name-calling can't solve.
For the GOP, the risk is practical: personal attacks may energize the base, but they hand Democrats an easy way to change the subject from affordability. The Omar search raises a separate institutional question. If people see federal law enforcement as an instrument of political retribution, public trust in the Justice Department suffers, whatever the evidence turns out to show. Voters who want limited, rule-bound government should watch how that case unfolds.