Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic US Senate candidate in Michigan, has hit back at Republican vice-president JD Vance\u2019s onslaught against him, saying it is \u201cevil\u201d to deprive people of healthcare and affordable groceries.<\/p>\n
Vance, in a Monday speech that railed against undocumented immigrants, cast El-Sayed as representative of \u201cterrible evil\u201d and as someone who fights for \u201cone group at the expense of others\u201d.<\/p>\n
El-Sayed, who would become the first Muslim US senator if he wins in November, accused Vance of a \u201cdog whistle\u201d at the Islamophobic attacks he has faced throughout his campaign.<\/p>\n
While Vance did not directly invoke El-Sayed\u2019s religion during his speech in Sterling Heights, Michigan, the vice-president warned: \u201cThere\u2019s something about Abdul El-Sayed that is very, very evil. And on the rise in the United States of America today.\u201d<\/p>\n
El-Sayed retorted in a statement: \u201cEvil 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
In his speech, Vance repeatedly claimed that El-Sayed prioritized his ethnic group over others, and called attention to comments El-Sayed made after the attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, earlier this year, where a man rammed a truck filled with gas and fireworks into a synonogue with families inside. As part of his initial response to the attack, El-Sayed noted<\/a> the attacker had lost family members in an airstrike in Lebanon, saying \u201churt people hurt people\u201d. El-Sayed recently said<\/a> he \u201cmade a mistake\u201d and should have issued a statement that solely condemned the attack.<\/p>\n Vance said in his speech: \u201cWhen you have people who start to say my ethnic group deserves something and yours doesn\u2019t, or that ethnic group is good and this other ethnic group is bad, that is how you erode the very foundations of commonality and common citizenship that we need to continue to have the United States be the most powerful and prosperous nation anywhere in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Vance also told El-Sayed to \u201ckeep my wife\u2019s name the hell out of your mouth, because she\u2019s way out of your league\u201d.<\/p>\n The jab was in response to comments El-Sayed had made about Vance\u2019s family, after the vice-president said<\/a> in an Ohio speech he would struggle to go back in time and explain the modern Democratic party to his late grandfather, whom he called \u201cPapaw\u201d. In those remarks, Vance baselessly accused El-Sayed of wanting to impose sharia law.<\/p>\n After Vance\u2019s comments about Papaw, El- Sayed wrote on X: \u201cSo do we think JD is taking [his wife] Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no?\u201d<\/p>\n Rightwing commentators called the post racist, and said it was out of bounds to bring up spouses.<\/p>\n Usha Vance, who is Indian American, told Fox News<\/a> that although she had not met her husband\u2019s grandparents, she said Vance\u2019s family was loving to her, and she believed his grandparents would have been loving toward her as well.<\/p>\n El-Sayed told<\/a> <\/a>CNN<\/a> on Monday night he would \u201crather not talk about spouses at all\u201d. But he said he brought up Usha Vance because JD Vance\u2019s political philosophy relies on an idea that some people are \u201cmore American\u201d than others. He asked why Vance would invoke his grandfather unless it was to hark back to a time when people like El-Sayed were \u201cless than normal\u201d in American politics.<\/p>\n Last month, Trump posted a photo of El-Sayed and his wife alongside one of Trump and his wife, which El-Sayed said was an attempt \u201cto highlight the fact that my wife wears a hijab, as if to make an argument that that\u2019s somehow less American\u201d. Trump used El-Sayed\u2019s full name, which Republicans have done to call attention to his ethnicity and religion, and wrote \u201ctwo VERY DIFFERENT America\u2019s [sic]\u201d.<\/p>\n El-Sayed told CNN: \u201cI believe in an America where any of us \u2013 me, his wife, any of us with different color skin or who pray different ways \u2013 can be just as American as JD and his Papaw, but he\u2019s not making that argument.<\/p>\n \u201cHe [Vance] likes to dog whistle about these things, but when you actually call him out on it, he acts like he would never bring anything like that into our political conversation, despite him and his boss doing that every single day.\u201d<\/p>\n