Vice President JD Vance doubled down on his attacks on Democratic Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed, even calling him a “psychopath” during a trip to Michigan. Vance previously targeted El-Sayed during his last stop in Michigan, calling him a “weasel.“
“Abdul El-Sayed is a little bit of a psychopath, and we’re going to just try to make the argument as well as we can and help Mike out a little bit,” Vance said before boarding Air Force Two en route to a rally. Vance insisted that El-Sayed has “engaged in the kind of explicitly anti-white racial hatred,” describing the candidate as “a guy who seems to love to traffic in racial hatred.”
Upon arriving in Howell, Michigan, Vance told the crowd that El-Sayed was an extremist. He claimed that if recent rioting in France were to spread to Detroit, El-Sayed would be “right there and cheering them on.”
The attack continues against El-Sayed
“The scene of destruction in Paris may be an ocean away, but ask yourselves: are they really so hard to imagine here in the United States of America?” Vance said. “And I guarantee you, if those rioters were burning down New York, or Detroit, the Hasan Pikers and El-Sayeds would be right there leading them and cheering them on.” Vance claimed that El-Sayed “wants to pass the green new scam and kill the auto industry of this state” and has “campaigned with his best friend Hassan Piker, a man who said that we deserved 9/11.”
He continued: “Abdul El-Sayed was born just north of Detroit in a town called Rochester Hills. Yet he is claiming to be, and I quote, ‘an immigrant from North Africa.’ For decades, he’s gone even further than that. He told people he is an Egyptian citizen,” the vice president said. “Why? Why would you tell people that you were not from the community that you’re actually from? It’s an insane claim to make… [He is] a man who would lie, who is so ashamed of this state that he would lie about being an immigrant from another continent.”
El-Sayed, who would become the first Muslim in the U.S. Senate if elected, has previously faced attacks from Donald Trump. The president called him a “jihadist,” accused him of supporting terrorists, and repeatedly emphasized his middle name, Mohammed. At a rally this weekend, El-Sayed responded: “They think that by pointing at my name and my faith, that somehow you’re going to ignore the fact that you can’t afford your gas or your groceries, can’t see a doctor.”
By contrast, Vance said, Republican candidate Mike Rogers would “further build upon the great momentum of the last 18 months.” Reports have noted that this midterm election campaign has witnessed the most intense wave of Islamophobic rhetoric in U.S. electoral politics since the aftermath of 9/11. Nonetheless, El-Sayed also leads Rogers by 2.5 percentage points, according to the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls.
Published: Oct 28, 2026 05:30 am