Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) posted a video excoriating his Senate colleague Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) after Tuberville shared a controversial post visually linking the devastating 9/11 attacks and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and contending that the “enemy is within” America. In his response, Murphy called Tuberville an “overt racist” and wondered rhetorically about how “broken a human being” Tuberville must be to have made some of the assertions in his post.
Just read Sen. Tuberville’s post.
The fact that Republicans consider a vicious overt racist like Tuberville a “mainstream” member of their party tells you all you need to know about the stakes of the next election. https://t.co/3Jeoum3o1U pic.twitter.com/VPTLXpwMVw
— Chris Murphy
(@ChrisMurphyCT) March 12, 2026
By “enemy within,” Tuberville referred not to the suspected existence of terrorist “sleeper cells” inside the U.S. that may have been activated after the U.S. attack on Iran, but to the recently elected Mamdani, an American-born Muslim who won the NYC general election in November by a wide margin.
Tuberville’s portrayal of Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist who vanquished more traditional candidates including former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to become mayor, aligns with that anti-Muslim rhetoric of Congressman Andy Ogles (R-TN), who has been criticized for “vile Islamophobia” while claiming Muslims don’t “belong” in America, which critics decry as both a willful misunderstanding of the First Amendment and a form of unadulterated bigotry.
While Tuberville’s characterization and fear-mongering face condemnation from Murphy and others, it has its adherents among Congress members like Ogles. Notably, however, Tuberville’s charge runs counter to the views of President Trump — a rare instance in which Tuberville has done something that reveals a distance between his position and that of the President.
Trump, in fact, has embraced Mamdani, who has been invited to the Oval Office twice since his election to meet with the President. On both occasions the two have smiled for photos and talked of a good working relationship. Trump has said he “speaks often” with Mamdani, whom he called “a nice guy” while revealing that the two “agree on a lot.”
Other responses to Tuberville also used visual storytelling (as below), using various photos of Trump with Muslim world leaders, to underscore the case that Islam and terrorism are not synonymous.
— The System (@tealtalk) March 12, 2026