Vice President JD Vance on Monday amplified the already caustic tone of Michigan’s close Senate race, calling Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed an “a very, very evil” person who should “keep my wife’s name the hell out of your mouth.”
Vance used a Republican rally in the suburbs of Detroit on Monday to respond to recent and months-old comments from El-Sayed about second lady Usha Vance, using El-Sayed’s biting jokes about the second couple as evidence the Democrat is “weird.”
Standing before a “Protecting Americans” banner, Vance also painted the U.S.-born El-Sayed as more sympathetic to foreigners than Americans. And he described El-Sayed in dark terms that echoed anti-Islamic rhetoric conservatives have deployed against El-Sayed, who is Muslim.
Michigan’s Senate race could determine which party holds power in the chamber, stakes that have drawn attention and huge amounts of campaign cash. And the swing state’s new status as an early presidential nominating state for Democrats intensified the partisan fervor.
Against that heightened backdrop, the close race between El-Sayed and Republican nominee Mike Rogers has spawned unrepentant bipartisan vitriol.
El-Sayed responded to Vance with a statement that said, “Michigan is better than being lectured to by sock puppets from Ohio.”
“Evil is ripping healthcare away from working people in exchange for tax breaks for billionaires. Evil is making people pay more for groceries and gas while pushing for trade wars and actual war. Evil is dividing people for your own gain. Evil is selling out your morals for a little bit of power,” El-Sayed said.
El-Sayed’s statement did not address anything he’s said about Usha Vance, who gave birth to the Vances’ fourth child in July. But earlier in the day, Rogers put out a campaign video calling El-Sayed “a conman” without further explanation, and resurfacing footage of El-Sayed discussing the awkward viral moment between Vance and his wife, when Vance greeted his spouse of 12 years with a pat on the knee.
“What do you think is going through Usha’s head when he talks? She’s like, ‘Damn, I have to sleep with him,’” El-Sayed said in the clip from April.
El-Sayed also brought up Usha Vance in a social media post last month, a response to Vance inaccurately saying El-Sayed advocated for sharia law. Vance said that if he went back in time his grandfather, an Appalachian Democrat whom he called Papaw, wouldn’t recognize the Democratic Party shaped by El-Sayed.
El-Sayed shot back, “So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no …”
Critics viewed the remark as bashing Usha Vance’s Indian heritage and insinuating she’d be rejected by Vance’s White ancestors, while El-Sayed said he was bashing Vance’s insinuation that you’re more American if you can trace your roots back generations.
Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Michigan) told Republicans at the rally hosted by President Donald Trump’s $400 million super PAC, MAGA, Inc., that the Senate race has outsize importance: “I tell everybody this is a battle for the soul of this country.”
Vance told the crowd he came with a message from Trump, Mike Rogers and all Republicans: “We are running people who love and fight for and defend all Americans. We don’t care who you are, so long as you belong in this country, we’re going to fight for you.”
The race’s tenor has often devolved into pettiness.
Earlier this week, Rogers and El-Sayed traded barbs on X over which was voted football captain or seemed to peak in high school.
El-Sayed on Monday continued to throw punches in his blistering critique of Republicans and Trump, who has put himself at the center of the midterm fight even as approval ratings have sunk this year.
At an event earlier in the day, El-Sayed characterized the Trump administration’s tariffs on Canada as an unnecessary war on affordability, pointing to data that shows Michigan is one of the states hit hardest by the president’s trade policy.
“Canadians are like the only people in the world who are going to preemptively apologize for something they didn’t even do,” El-Sayed said. “So if you’re starting a trade war with Canada, it’s because you’re the asshole.”
And he took another off-color jab at Rogers campaigning with Vance, referencing the lewd and false internet story about the vice president being intimate with a couch cushion.
“We don’t have more couches here than they have in Ohio, so I’m just trying to figure out why he would come and why you would bring him,” El-Sayed said.
Republicans have framed El-Sayed’s populist Democratic policies as socialism, and placed a magnifying glass on both his views toward Israel and his political connection to provocative online streamer Hasan Piker, which has also drawn criticism from Democrats. El-Sayed calls the war in Gaza a genocide and called for end to providing arms to foreign militaries, explicitly signaling out Israel and Egypt, the country from which his parents immigrated before he was born.
Over the weekend, El-Sayed apologized to Jewish Democrats for comments he made earlier this year after an attack on Michigan synagogue. He condemned the attack, but many Jewish people saw his earlier comments as also explaining it away when he said “hurt people hurt people,” referring to the attacker.
Republicans have used El-Sayed’s Muslim identity as a line of attack, and the Democrat has objected to Trump posting pictures of his wife Sarah in a hijab, calling it a dig to suggest the couple is un-American.
Rogers, a former congressman who narrowly lost a Senate bid two years ago, cast the race as an imperative to “defend freedom” from progressive politics, saying, “Listen, Michigan, we have a state to save.”
State Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D) — a former El-Sayed political rival who is working to unite Democrats behind him — also cast the contest as a high-stakes opportunity to hold Republicans and the Trump administration accountable for their policies.
“So welcome to Michigan, JD Vance,” she said. “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
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