Vice President JD Vance branded Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed one of the most radical Senate candidates in U.S. history while campaigning for Republican Mike Rogers, citing attacks on American workers and a weak reply to a temple assault.
Vance delivered the remarks Thursday in Monroe, Michigan, as he backed Rogers in the state’s Senate race and drew a sharp contrast with the Democratic contender. Breitbart reported the vice president framed the choice as one between common-sense priorities and far-left rhetoric.
He told the crowd El-Sayed “is one of the craziest, one of the most far-left, and one of the most radical people running for high office in the history of the United States of America.”
Vance pressed the point with family history. He said El-Sayed “calls our nation irredeemably racist. He calls the United States of America genocidal, and he hates the people who built it, people like my grandfather, who was for 40 years a union welder at the Middletown Works of Armco Steel in Ohio.”
"Abdul says that men like this, men like you, men like your father and grandfather and your son, were bigots."
The vice president went further on an August post from El-Sayed. Vance said the Democrat suggested he would not have brought second lady Usha Vance back in time to meet his late grandfather if given the chance.
Vance put it this way: El-Sayed claimed his “papaw, one of the greatest men that I have ever known, the man who raised me when my own mom and dad struggled... was incapable of loving my darling wife and our amazing second lady for the simple fact that he was white and she is not.”
He noted the charge came even though El-Sayed “was raised in part by his own white step-grandfathers,” and added he could only imagine what El-Sayed says “when the cameras aren’t on.”
That personal line fits a broader pattern of Vance calling out radical Democrat candidates on the campaign trail and at party events.
Vance accused the Democrat of rewriting his own background. He said El-Sayed “invented a totally fictitious background for himself, not as a Michigander born an hour north of where we stand today, but as a foreigner who came here from 6,000 miles away.”
"What does it say about your love of your community when you literally lie? You are so ashamed of this place that you lie about where you came from."
The vice president cast the claim as more than a resume dispute. In his telling, it showed disdain for the very communities El-Sayed now seeks to represent in the Senate.
Midterm travel has kept Vance on the road in key states, including stops that echo his return to Ohio for campaign events as Republicans push their Senate map.
Vance also turned to the attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan. Authorities identified Ayman Mohammad Ghazali as the attacker who died at the scene and have described the incident as a Hezbollah-inspired terrorist attack.
Vance recounted the assault in stark terms: “this foreign-born jihadist, a literal terrorist, ran his truck into the temple and opened fire, hoping to kill hundreds of innocent Jewish schoolchildren, our fellow Americans inside.”
He said El-Sayed’s response was the phrase “Hurt people, hurt people.” Vance argued that in that moment El-Sayed “decided to attack the people who were victimized by that crime, and he decided to show empathy for the people who were committing that crime.”
"In a moment where he should show leadership, he decided to attack the people who were victimized by that crime, and he decided to show empathy for the people who were committing that crime."
The vice president presented that reaction as a test of character for anyone seeking high office in Michigan. Voters, he implied, can judge whether empathy for the attacker or solidarity with the victims comes first.
Against that record, Vance held up Rogers as focused on kitchen-table issues. “Mike cares about the simple things, the things that should be easy. He cares about lower costs. He cares about lower taxes. He cares about bringing good jobs into the state of Michigan, and of course, he cares about our young people being able to afford a home and the community that made them who they are.”
He added that Rogers’ view “is that we must fight for every citizen of this great state, regardless of color or creed, regardless of where you came from and what you look like, because at the end of the day, Mike Rogers knows that he has one job... It’s to put Michigan first every single day.”
Those themes track with other recent appearances in which Vance has defended administration choices and kept pressure on opponents he labels out of step with ordinary voters.
The Monroe speech gave Republicans a clear contrast heading into the Michigan contest: one candidate, in Vance’s account, talks down the country’s builders and softens the edge of terror; the other talks costs, jobs, housing, and state loyalty.
Michigan voters now get to decide which approach belongs in the Senate.
