HARGEISA, SOMALIA – President Donald Trump told a campaign rally in Youngstown, Ohio, on Monday 12 October that Somaliland is “a totally different country” from Somalia and should change its name, in a passage of the speech built around attacks on Minnesota’s Somali community, and by Wednesday hundreds of people were celebrating the remark in Hargeisa. Somaliland’s presidency, its foreign minister and both of its main parties welcomed the words as the closest an American president has come to recognition, and Senator Ted Cruz called for formal recognition the next day. No statement on the remarks had come from Villa Somalia or the federal foreign ministry by Thursday 15 October, eleven days after President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud signed a communique at Alamein rejecting any recognition of Somaliland.
What Donald Trump Said in Youngstown
President Donald Trump came to Youngstown to campaign for the Republican ticket in Ohio, Jon Husted for the Senate against Sherrod Brown and Vivek Ramaswamy for governor, and spent several minutes of the speech on Minnesota. According to the transcript of the rally, he told the crowd that “savage Somali gang members” had shot two people at a high school football game. He said members of the Somali community had “looted tens of billions of dollars from Minnesota welfare programs” and that “they come from a part of the world that only knows how to kill each other.”
About nine minutes later, attacking state budgets he said foreign thieves were pillaging, he turned to the name. “I call it Somalia land, not Somaliland, because actually it’s a totally different country,” President Donald Trump said. He added that some people liked Somaliland, said “I think they should change the name immediately,” and went straight on to claim that Somalis in Minnesota were the leading buyers of Mercedes and BMW cars in the state. The passage closed with an appeal to Ohio voters to keep their state from being plundered the way he said Minnesota had been.
The transcript does not say plainly whether “Somalia land” was his name for Minnesota or for Somalia, and the sentence about Somaliland sits inside a riff on immigration with no reference to Berbera, to recognition or to any policy decision.
A report on Wednesday 14 October said the administration was examining how Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota obtained her citizenship after arriving from Somalia as a refugee, with subpoenas issued to relatives and a grand jury sitting in Minnesota, and her office called the inquiry baseless. Neither the White House nor the State Department published anything on Somaliland after the rally, and Washington’s stated policy remains support for Somalia’s territorial integrity. In an interview with Newsmax broadcast on Thursday 15 October President Donald Trump described Somalia as a country with no government, no army and no police, said piracy was the one thing it did well, and, asked whether it was a state Washington did not formally recognise, said it was not even a country.
Hargeisa Hears Recognition
Somaliland’s presidency posted a clip of the remarks on Tuesday 13 October and said they “underscore Somaliland’s distinct identity and its separate political reality,” promising to keep pursuing recognition through diplomacy. The minister of the presidency, Khadar Hussein Abdi, went further the same day and wrote that a sitting American president had for the first time publicly acknowledged Somaliland as separate from Somalia, tying the moment to President Irro’s September trip to Washington. Foreign Minister Abdirahman Dahir Adam wrote that “Somaliland is a sovereign, self-governing nation,” and the foreign ministry asked for deeper engagement with the Trump administration on security, trade and investment.
Hersi Ali Haji Hassan, chairman of the opposition Waddani party, took up the name change and offered “Red Sea Republic” as a candidate. Critics in Hargeisa warned that a new name could weaken a recognition case resting on the claim that Somaliland restored in 1991 a sovereignty it had held in 1960. Somaliland took its independence from Britain on 26 June 1960, five days before Somalia, joined it to form the Somali Republic, and declared the union over in 1991 after a decade of war. The ruling Kulmiye party welcomed President Donald Trump’s remarks on Wednesday 14 October and asked Washington for formal recognition.
On the Wednesday, crowds gathered in Kheyriyadda Square waving American and Somaliland flags, some printed with President Donald Trump’s face, and chanting “Long live America.” One man in the square said the statement marked the beginning of American recognition. Senator Ted Cruz had already linked a video of the rally on Tuesday with the words “Somaliland is not Somalia. Well past time for the United States to formally recognize it,” and called the president “exactly right.” Mohamed Yasin, who said he disagreed with some of the president’s comments, told reporters in the square that Somaliland felt it had “already been recognised.”
Donald Trump on Somaliland Before Youngstown
Asked on 8 August 2025 whether his administration was weighing recognition, President Donald Trump said, “We are looking into that right now,” and the presidency in Hargeisa welcomed that too. Israel recognised Somaliland on Friday 26 December 2025, becoming the first state to do so, and asked the same day whether the United States would follow, President Donald Trump told the New York Post “No” and added, “Does anyone know what Somaliland is, really?” Mogadishu called the Israeli decision a deliberate attack on its sovereignty, and the African Union said Somaliland remains part of Somalia.
President Irro spent much of September in Washington working on that question. He arrived on 5 September for a two week visit, his first official trip to the American capital. There he met officials from the State, Defense, Treasury and Energy departments and allies in Congress, and on 14 September he gave a keynote at the Hudson Institute, on the same day the White House sent Devin Kennington’s nomination as ambassador to Mogadishu to the Senate, so that Washington found itself dealing with Bosaso and Hargeisa in the same week. He was not received at the White House, although a National Security Council official sat in on his State Department meeting.
President Irro put Berbera, minerals and other facilities on offer to American investors during that visit and left expanded military access open to negotiation, and China warned him on 16 September of serious consequences over Taiwan. In an interview published days before the Youngstown rally, President Irro called President Donald Trump a “great man” who could make more history by recognising Somaliland, and promised cooperation without conditions on counterterrorism, piracy, maritime security and safer trade routes, pointing to Somaliland’s position on the Gulf of Aden. The remark in Ohio came within days of that interview, and the State Department announced no change of position after it.
Mogadishu Says Nothing After Alamein
On Sunday 4 October President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud sat at New Alamein with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt, President Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea and Sudan’s General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and their joint communique rejected any recognition of Somaliland, backed the unity of Somalia and Sudan and urged steady funding for the African Union mission. It also set up a mechanism to follow up on the summit. Eight days later President Donald Trump called Somaliland a different country before a crowd in Ohio. The only word from the federal foreign ministry came on Tuesday 13 October, when its state minister, Ali Balcad, disowned a statement circulating under the federal emblem that urged Washington to respect Somalia’s unity, saying the ministry had not issued it. No federal reaction of its own had been published by the time the crowds dispersed in Hargeisa.
On Thursday 15 October President Irro gave his own answer to Alamein. “We oppose the step against our statehood taken by the recently allied Egypt-led states,” he said, and in the same remarks called Ethiopia a neighbour whose cooperation Hargeisa trusts and said Somaliland opposes any act that threatens Ethiopia’s stability. Ethiopia accused Eritrea of an all-out invasion on 8 October, and with that war threatening, Hargeisa now stands openly with Addis Ababa while Mogadishu has put its name to a communique with Cairo and Asmara.
In Mogadishu the same week went to the election and the opposition. The Electoral Commission set the presidential vote for 15 May 2027 on Thursday 15 October, and the opposition rejected the timetable within hours. On the evening of Thursday 15 October President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud told members of parliament from his own party that no politician was in prison and no house was being attacked, after troops had closed the roads to Sheikh Sharif’s home in Wadajir the previous weekend. Hargeisa spent the same days on flags, party statements and an argument about renaming the country at the suggestion of a man who, ten months earlier, had asked whether anyone knew what Somaliland was, and the federal government that counts Somaliland as part of Somalia had published no statement on President Donald Trump’s remarks.
