After US President Donald Trump called a number of Arab nations "shithouse countries" on Saturday, his newly minted adviser on Arab-American affairs said the American president has since promised he wouldn't do it again.
"Libya, Yemen, Haiti, Somalia. Remember what I called them? Shithouse countries," Trump told a crowd of supporters at a rally in Perry, Georgia, where he is drumming up support for Republican candidates ahead of the 3 November midterm elections.
He added that the countries are "terror-infested".
"Why do we always have to take people from shithouse countries? Why can't we take people from like, well, Norway, Sweden? Why not Denmark?"
Amer Ghalib, his Yemeni-born adviser, wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday that he "contacted the president via text message" to express his "dismay and rejection of those remarks".
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He said he later met with the president ahead of his rally in Port Huron, Michigan, on Sunday, and "reiterated my request".
"He expressed understanding of the situation and pledged to address the issue and ensure it does not recur," Ghalib added.
The Facebook post was in Arabic only, whereas Ghalib normally provides an English translation as well.
At his rally in Michigan, Trump did not go after Arab and Muslim countries, but did very much go after the surging Arab and Muslim Democratic candidate for Senate in the state, Abdul El-Sayed.
'I think this language is indicative to me as a language of desperation'
-Bishara Bahbah, founder, Arab Americans for Trump
“I’m here to keep a jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member from becoming a United States senator,” Trump told the crowd.
Sayed, he added, "wants our country to go to Sharia law, and if he ever pulls that off, he should be the first one that’s tried. I’ll be a witness".
There are no known links between Sayed and the Muslim Brotherhood, an ideological political party largely suppressed in the Middle East. Three of its offshoots were designated as terror organisations by the US president last year. It has no central hub.
"I think this language is indicative to me as a language of desperation," Bishara Bahbah, the Palestinian-American former Harvard academic who founded "Arab Americans for Trump" in 2024, told Middle East Eye on Monday.
"It's very different than the Trump we knew in 2024 when he was very careful not to offend anybody, and he was very careful to thank the Arab and Muslims for their vote. Now, the stakes for the president are not the same."
In a written statement shared with MEE, Jenin Younes, the president and legal director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said the rhetoric at Trump's rallies "is tired, dangerous, and designed to distract from the realities facing everyday Americans".
"I hope voters see through these tactics so we can come together and focus on getting this country back on track."
'Red line'
The president has seemed mostly unbothered by what the outcome of the midterms could be, even as analysts predict a blue wave that could mean the House and Senate go to Democrats.
So much so that he's choosing to campaign in red Republican districts - his comfort zone among supporters - rather than try to win over voters in other areas.
Last week he told reporters at the White House that when he doesn't run, "people don't show up to vote", so he's asking them to "pretend I'm on the ballot".
The midterms are very much a referendum on the conduct of the commander-in-chief.
A Democratic victory would impede Trump's agenda for his final two years in office, and potentially lead to the impeachment of his Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, for the way the war on Iran has been handled.
Trump's approval rating among Americans this month has hovered between a low of 34 percent at its lowest and 40 percent at its highest.
The results stem from high fuel prices during an affordability crisis in the US, as well as tens of thousands of families being impacted by the sometimes violent mass arrests and deportations of immigrants.
He also recently endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the 27 October election, despite deep disdain for Netanyahu among conservatives who have become critical of the US-Israel relationship.
So is it still worth it for impacted communities to engage with this administration if the president's behaviour is so unpredictable and the power dynamic in Washington is about to undergo a dramatic shift?
Bahbah, whose goal in 2024 was to get Trump to end Israel's genocide in Gaza, told MEE he has been "rebuffed" by the White House in recent weeks, despite being a critical backchannel between US negotiators and Hamas in the lead-up to the 10 October 2025 Gaza ceasefire deal.
Asked how that made him feel, he responded: "Like shit."
He said he has not been surprised by Trump's remarks toward Arabs and Muslims, but that it "crosses a red line".
"The president has been calling Chuck Schumer a Palestinian," Bahbah said of the top Democrat in the Senate. "We've spoken with the president and told him a Palestinian is not a slur, and not to use it, and he committed not to use it, and yet he uses it again," Bahbah said.
In Michigan on Sunday, Trump praised his daughter's father-in-law, Lebanese-born Massad Boulos, for helping him win the Arab-American vote in Michigan two years ago.
"My senior advisor for Arab and African affairs... he is unbelievable," Trump said.
MEE was unable to reach Boulos by phone on Monday.
Obama rallies with Sayed
Longtime conservatives within the Arab and Muslim community are particularly stung by Trump's - and by extension the Republican Party's - spate of offensive language, Omar Shajrah, former legal counsel to the Michigan House, told MEE on Monday.
"They stuck their neck out" for the president in 2024, he said.
"The Yemeni community, they kind of label themselves as the more conservative of the Muslim community, right? Because of their traditions and their values. So I think it's it's hurt a lot of people... it's kind of hard to come back from."
Shajrah, who typically votes Republican, said he will not back Sayed's opponent, the Trump-endorsed Mike Rogers, even though he has supported Rogers in previous races.
"They're doing a horrible job of communicating" their actual policies, he said of the GOP.
Shajrah did not, however, vote for Sayed during Michigan's early voting, he told MEE.
"I think Abdul is a great political athlete. I think he's very talented... he's a breath of fresh air for a lot of people."
While Trump made his "shithouse" remarks in Georgia on Saturday, former President Barack Obama - whom Trump repeatedly calls "Barack Hussein Obama" to emphasise his father's Muslim roots - joined Sayed for a rally in Detroit, Michigan.
While in no way a progressive Democrat like Sayed, Obama is still seen as a kingmaker among establishment Democrats, and remains very popular in the Black community.
Michigan is largely a working-class manufacturing hub and a swing state at election time, so it could go either way. A win for Sayed would not just mean the country's first-ever Muslim in the Senate, but also that socialist-style ideas do indeed have a wide appeal.
"We have seen this movie before," Obama told the crowd. "I starred in it. I've got a long-form birth certificate to prove it. This stuff didn't work on me. Not in Michigan. It's not going to work on Abdul."
The former president was referring to the birther controversy started by Trump in 2011, ahead of Obama's second re-election campaign. Trump, then a real estate mogul and reality TV star, claimed Obama was not born in the US, and drummed up so much frenzy in the media that Obama was forced to produce his birth certificate from Hawaii.
That move by Trump was widely seen as the launchpad for his presidential campaign in 2015, as he played on the fears of many conservatives throughout the administration of the country's first Black president.
"Abdul will always stand up to special interests to lower costs for Michigan families. He'll fight for you every day of the week," Obama said on Friday.
"And by the way, imagine - because you already got a pretty good senator right here - imagine the power duo of Abdul and Elissa," he added, referring to former CIA analyst and the other Democratic senator from Michigan, Elissa Slotkin.
"You got a Muslim man. You got a Jewish woman - fighting for you in the United States Senate. That's something, Michigan, you can be proud of."
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