Ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, President Donald Trump on Monday berated Democratic Party candidates as jihadists.

“We have jihadists being elected all over the place. We have this—whether it’s communism, jihadism,” Mr Trump said when asked about candidates fielded by Democrats for the midterm elections.

Speaking with journalists in the Oval Office, the American president also railed against people of Somali descent, saying, “They’re not smart, they have no aptitude. They have nothing going, and they’re telling us how to run our country.”

Mr Trump’s statement labelling Democratic politicians jihadists came on the heels of his posting a photo of him and his wife and a photo of Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Senate primary candidate, and his wife, with a text, saying, “Two different America’s.”

On Sunday, in an interview with CNN, Mr El-Sayed lashed out at Mr Trump, saying the photo of him and his wife posted by Mr Trump showed “two people who genuinely love each other” while the photo of Mr Trump and his wife showed “people who don’t like each other but joined in the interest of making billions of dollars off of you”.