Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic Senate candidate, pushed back hard against Vice President JD Vance after Vance publicly labeled him “very, very evil” at a Detroit rally.
Vance made the incendiary comment at the rally earlier Monday, delivering a pointed and personal attack against El-Sayed before a Michigan crowd.
“There’s something about Abdul El-Sayed that is very, very evil and on the rise in the United States of America today,” Vance said at the event.
El-Sayed responded the same evening during an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, seemingly taking aim at Vance’s political transformation over the past decade toward President Trump.
“Well, let me tell you what’s evil,” El-Sayed told Collins when asked about Vance’s remarks, launching into a pointed counterattack.
“Evil is the idea of starting wars when there’s peace. Evil is the idea of stripping away people’s healthcare when they absolutely have no other option,” El-Sayed continued.
“What’s evil is to do that, so that you can pass a tax cut for billionaires,” El-Sayed added, drawing a sharp contrast with the current administration’s fiscal priorities.
Vance had argued at the rally that El-Sayed represents a dangerous political philosophy that divides Americans along group lines rather than uniting them as citizens.
“That is how, ladies and gentlemen, you destroy the United States of America,” Vance said, framing El-Sayed’s politics as fundamentally corrosive to national unity.
Vance also attacked El-Sayed for campaigning with far-left Twitch streamer Hasan Piker during the Democratic primary, invoking Piker’s past comments suggesting the U.S. deserved the September 11 attacks.
“My message to Abdul El-Sayed is: You can pal around with terrorist sympathizers, and you can say that America deserved 9/11,” Vance said, escalating the rhetoric significantly.
Vance closed his attack with a personal note, saying: “But whatever you want to talk about, Abdul, keep my wife’s name the hell out of your mouth, because she’s way out of your league.”
El-Sayed has expressly disavowed Piker’s 9/11 comment and has sought to distance himself from the controversy surrounding those remarks.
El-Sayed also recently apologized for saying, following a March attack on a Michigan synagogue, that “violence is a cycle” and that “hurt people hurt people,” though he did condemn the attack and antisemitism broadly at the time.
El-Sayed is competing against former Rep. Mike Rogers for the Michigan Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Gary Peters in a key battleground state Trump carried in 2024.
Rogers may be facing his own political headwinds, as concerns about the Iran war, economic anxiety, and Trump’s slumping approval ratings continue to weigh on Republican candidates nationwide.
