Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) on Tuesday offered a limited explanation for his social media post that appeared to connect New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, while also minimizing concerns about whether the remarks were offensive.

During an interview, DC News Now’s Reshad Hudson asked Tuberville to clarify a post he shared last Thursday on X. In that post, Tuberville reposted an image showing the World Trade Center under attack on 9/11 alongside a photo of Mamdani hosting a Ramadan iftar at City Hall, accompanied by the caption, “The enemy is inside the gates.”

Tuberville responded with a laugh before saying, “I just go by his rhetoric.”

“He’s made a lot of statements about his stance with Islam and radical Islam, all the things that go along with what he preaches every day,” he continued. “And I’m just kind of repeating what he’s saying.”

He went on to stress that the country should avoid division, adding, “we don’t need a division in this country. We need everybody to go with the Constitution, understand we have moral values. And if we all stick with those –– I don’t care if you’re Muslim or Catholic or Baptist, it makes no difference.”

“We need to make the country better; we don’t need to divide it. That’s what he’s doing in New York,” he claimed without providing an example.

When asked whether Muslim residents in Alabama might have found the post offensive, Tuberville said he has “got some great Muslim friends” and noted that he had spoken with “two Iranians in Alabama this past week about the war. Obviously, they’re Muslim.”

He then added, “if you teach and preach Sharia law, if you bow down to the Quran, it teaches death to Americans. That don’t fly with me, OK?”

Tuberville reiterated that he is not concerned with individuals’ religious affiliations, emphasizing, “Hey, you come be part of our country [and] don’t try to divide people, don’t try to push your culture — we already have a culture — [then] I’m all for you.”

The post drew significant backlash, coming amid a surge of heated anti-Muslim rhetoric from some Republican lawmakers during the ongoing U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran’s Islamic regime. Comments from figures such as Reps. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) and Randy Fine (R-Fla.) have sparked calls for formal censure, with a censure motion already filed in Ogles’ case.

Mamdani responded directly to Tuberville’s original post, writing, “Let there be as much outrage from politicians in Washington when kids go hungry as there is when I break bread with New Yorkers.”

Other officials issued even sharper criticism. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) described Tuberville as a “racist piece of [garbage].”

“Blatantly racist. Wildly Islamophobic. Republicans aren’t even trying to hide their true colors,” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) wrote in a post on X. “Hate against one is hate against all, and we only conquer vile hate [by] uniting together as a nation of and for all people.”