President Donald Trump has found a new way to go after politicians he doesn’t like: dragging their marriages into his political feuds.
On Saturday, the 80-year-old president unleashed a flurry of posts on Truth Social, including one targeting Democratic Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, 41, and his wife.
The post paired a photo of Trump and Melania Trump, 56, with one of El-Sayed and his wife, Dr. Sarah Jukaku, putting the two couples side by side beneath the typo-riddled caption: “Two VERY DIFFERENT America’s.”
Trump also singled out El-Sayed’s full name, identifying him as “Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed”—a pointed choice that echoes his repeated emphasis on Barack Obama’s middle name, “Hussein.”
When asked about Trump’s post on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, El-Sayed agreed that the two marriages represented “two very different Americas,” but turned the president’s jab back on him. He contrasted what he described as a marriage between “two people who don’t like each other” but are united by their shared interest in making “billions of dollars off of you” with his own relationship with Jukaku, which he said is rooted in genuine love, family, and even enjoying “some pancakes together.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to El-Sayed’s representatives for comment.
El-Sayed won Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary on Tuesday, defeating establishment-backed Rep. Haley Stevens and sparking a wave of outrage from MAGA supporters.
Trump’s MAGA base has taken particular issue with El-Sayed’s unapologetic use of the phrase “inshallah”—Arabic for “God willing”—during his election-night victory speech. If he wins the general election in November, he would become the first Muslim senator in U.S. history.
The president has joined his MAGA allies in attacking El-Sayed, going as far as to call him “full of s--t” and warn voters about the candidate’s push to abolish the filibuster. But the attacks appear to have done little to rattle the epidemiologist and former public health official, who has brushed off the president’s baseless criticism.
The Michigan Senate candidate has been married to Jukaku since their days at the University of Michigan, getting engaged while she was still a freshman. In a 2006 article for The Michigan Daily, the couple described some of the traditions they observed as American Muslims.
“Islam teaches us not to let our desires play too much of a role in our lives,” El-Sayed told the outlet at the time. “The fact that we’re so willing to commit to marriage is a byproduct of this general self-control,” he added.
Jukaku, a psychiatrist and the daughter of Indian immigrants, also features prominently in her husband’s book, Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic. In the book, El-Sayed writes about how his wife taught him to “dance” with his emotions.
Jukaku and El-Sayed share two daughters, Emmalee and Serene, according to his campaign.
Meanwhile, the president and first lady have been married since 2005 and share one son, Barron Trump. The marriage is Trump’s third. He was previously married to Ivana Trump, with whom he shares three children, and Marla Maples, with whom he shares a daughter, Tiffany.
According to a new book, Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Trump doesn’t share the traditional White House master bedroom with his wife.
Instead, the first lady occupies the primary bedroom while Trump has taken over the space next door, which is typically labeled the second-floor “living room” on White House maps.
“Sarah and I like each other,” El-Sayed said during his CNN appearance on Sunday, adding, “I don’t know about the first lady and the president, but from what I’ve heard, it’s a bit of a rocky road.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
