President Donald Trump’s answer to Barack Obama’s return to the campaign trail landed on Truth Social in the middle of the night.
Trump, 80, posted the attack at 12:42 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026, hours after former President Barack Obama headlined a Michigan rally for Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed and gubernatorial nominee Jocelyn Benson. The post opened on Obama’s record and ended with a plea to Michigan voters.
“Obama was a grossly incompetent President!” Trump wrote. He went on to say Obama paid Iran billions and gave the country a road to a nuclear weapon, and that Obama’s campaigning for Hillary Clinton and then for Kamala Harris ended in defeat both times.
Then he turned to El-Sayed’s faith.
He branded El-Sayed a “Muslim Brotherhood Jihadist” who, he claimed, hates Jews, Black Americans and Trump himself, predicted he would lose and dismissed him as a “Fake Doctor” running the “WORST CLINIC IN AMERICA.”
The Birth Certificate Line in Michigan
Obama had been in Michigan on Saturday, Oct. 24, for one of his first rallies of the 2026 midterms, stumping for El-Sayed and for Benson, the party’s nominee for governor. He assailed what he called Trump’s corruption, the “cruelty and chaos” of his administration and the “foolishness” coming out of it. He also drew a line from the attacks on El-Sayed to the racist birther conspiracy theories Trump once pushed about him.
“We have seen this movie before. I starred in it,” Obama said, telling the crowd he had the long form birth certificate to prove it and that the tactic had not worked on him in Michigan and would not work on El-Sayed, who was born and raised in the state.
El-Sayed’s Muslim identity and background have been a focus of his Republican opponent, Senate candidate Mike Rogers, a MAGA ally Trump has endorsed.
From the Reflecting Pool to HGTV
Earlier Saturday, Obama, 65, rallied at Cleveland’s Public Auditorium for two Ohio Democrats: Amy Acton, the state’s former health director, who is running for governor, and former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is challenging Republican Sen. Jon Husted.
There, he sized up the renovated Oval Office. It looked “like Saddam Hussein opened up a Cheesecake Factory,” he told the crowd.
Obama revisited the old “drain the swamp” promise and said the only draining he could point to had happened at the National Mall Reflecting Pool, which he traced to a no-bid contract. He questioned whether the president was thinking about voters’ problems at all, saying he seemed fixed on home renovations and belonged on HGTV.
The Degrees Behind the “Fake Doctor” Claim
El-Sayed holds a Doctor of Medicine degree from Columbia University and a DPhil in public health from Oxford University.
Polls have Rogers and El-Sayed running neck and neck. El-Sayed’s criticism of Israel’s government has cost him with some Jewish voters in Michigan, and he has had trouble building support among Black voters. Trump, for his part, boasted that he carried the state “BIG” and brought back its car industry and its Air Force base.
Obama’s attacks on Trump have grown sharper heading into the midterms, as Republicans brace for heavy House losses and fight to a draw for control of the Senate.
He ended the post by calling El-Sayed an “arrogant, Open Borders” candidate whose reputation would sink as “more information is revealed,” then told Michigan voters: “VOTE FOR MIKE ROGERS!”