Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, accused Vice President JD Vance and President Donald Trump of “hypocrisy” after Vance attacked El-Sayed as “evil” and ordered him to keep Usha Vance’s “name the hell out of” his mouth.
On Monday, JD campaigned in Michigan for GOP senate candidate Mike Rogers, and called El-Sayed “evil.”
El-Sayed has said he invoked Usha Vance’s name in order to point out the hypocrisy of Vance’s “political philosophy that says that some people are somehow more American than others.”
El-Sayed was responding to JD’s implication that El-Sayed wants to implement Sharia law, noting Vance would “love to go back in time and tell my Papaw that there is a man who claims to stand for working people who says not only should we have Sharia law, but if you criticize it, you’re a white supremacist. That’s not my grandpa’s Democratic Party.”
JD was pretending that El-Sayed supported Sharia law after he criticized in 2022 an Oklahoma proposal for judges to ignore Islamic and international law in their rulings. El-Sayed said “you can’t understand a Sharia ban without understanding the Trail of Tears,” recounting the history of white supremacy in Oklahoma. Right wingers have taken the comment out of context, saying El-Sayed supports Sharia law.
El-Sayed also clobbered JD over his previous claims in a book that he had sexual relations with a couch.
El-Sayed also touched on the generality of a war between Michigan and Ohio, which was discussed previously in the context of the football rivalry between the University of Michigan and Ohio State University.
Right wingers attempted to discredit El-Sayed in social media for using a phrase chanted at football games in Ann Arbor, “Beat Ohio,” insisting he didn’t know the rival team was Ohio State University.
El-Sayed graduated in 2007 from the University of Michigan with highest honors, and delivered the commencement speech that year. You can see that here if you are interested. Derp.
An Axios report revealed that Michigan’s tariff burden since January 2025 has been the highest in the nation, with each household carrying $5,619 of Trump’s tariff war costs, with the most impact coming from cars and trucks.
Making Detroit Great Again!!
El-Sayed summed up the expensive trade war with Canada:
Reporting from Forbes and Bridge Michigan