Vice President JD Vance was confronted on Tuesday about President Donald Trump’s comment days earlier that Abdul El-Sayed (D) is a “jihadist,” to which the veep replied that the Michigan Senate hopeful has “weird friends.”
Vance held a brief gaggle with reporters at Joint Base Andrews on Tuesday before heading to Howell, Michigan, to campaign for El-Sayed’s Republican opponent, Mike Rogers.
“Is Abdul El-Sayed a jihadist like President Trump said?” a reporter asked Vance at one point.
Vance answered:
Well, look. He certainly has a lot of weird friends and he said a lot of crazy stuff and he has identified himself with a segment of the Democratic Party which, by the way, I don’t think represents most Democrats in the country.
But unfortunately it represents a lot of elected Democrats, who seem to align with people who justify violence against the United States of America. I don’t know what’s in the guy’s heart, but I know he has a lot of weird friends.
Trump made the scathing rebuke of El-Sayed during a campaign rally on Sunday night in Port Huron, Michigan.
“I’m here to keep a jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member from becoming a United States senator, and that’s the fact,” Trump said. “We’re not gonna let that happen.”
It wasn’t the first time Trump slapped the “jihadist” label on El-Sayed, as Trump has repeated it several times as he tries to gin up support for Rogers.
El-Sayed responded to the attack the next day, telling his supporters, “You have Donald Trump come here yesterday, spent two hours talking about me. Here is the thing, though, I’m not here to talk about me. This whole thing is about you.”
New: The Mediaite One-Sheet “Newsletter of Newsletters”
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!