Vance calls El-Sayed ‘very, very evil’

Vice President Vance lashed out at Democratic Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed at a campaign style rally in Detroit on Monday, labeling him as “evil.”

“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.

“It’s people who see themselves not as citizens of a combination, fighting for every single person, whether they’re Jewish or Christian, whether they’re white or black or brown, but see themselves as fighting for one group at the expense of others,” he continued. “And that is how, ladies and gentlemen, you destroy the United States of America.”

The vice president went on to knock El-Sayed for campaigning with far-left Twitch streamer Hasan Piker during the Democratic primary, and invoked Piker’s past comments saying the U.S. deserved the Sept. 11 terror attacks, which Piker has since apologized for.

“When I see Abdul El-Sayed campaign around this state with somebody who said that America deserved 9-11, what I see is a man who has sympathy and compassion for people who share his religion but have nothing for people who don’t,” Vance said. “A person who will apologize for a murderer so long as he looks the right way but will not understand the plight of an innocent child if that person has the wrong faith.”

Piker has taken a central role in the state’s Senate race despite not being on the ballot.

The streamer faced backlash on both sides of the aisle recently when he said “Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone’s going to come around and take action.”

“Not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews,” he said.

El-Sayed said in a statement responding to the backlash that “nobody speaks for this campaign besides me and my campaign spokespeople.”

He also noted that his commitment to Jewish safety “is the same as my commitment to the safety of my own daughters,” referring to antisemitism as “a scourge.”

El-Sayed spent much of the weekend reaching out to the Jewish Democratic caucus in Michigan, and apologized for comments in March following an attack on a Detroit area synagogue in which he said “hurt people hurt people.”

“We condemned that terrorist attack. We condemned it outright. What I was trying to do was offer context for why it happened, but it wasn’t the time for context, and you don’t ever want to trample somebody’s pain,” El-Sayed told reporters over the weekend.

However, on Monday, Vance attacked El-Sayed over his response to the synagogue attack, and told his supporters that the synagogue’s rabbi and security guards were present at the event.

Ahead of Vance’s visit, El-Sayed swiped at what he called the chaotic nature of the Trump administration, while taking a shot at his general election opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers (Mich.).

“Over the past couple of weeks, Michiganders have been struck by yet another disastrous Trump policy: the expansion of a trade war with Canada,” El-Sayed told reporters at a press conference. “With Mike Rogers, he has no choice but to rubber stamp, to ‘roger,’ a trade war that is now costing Michiganders—that he says he wants to serve—nearly $6,000 a year.”

“The choice could not be more clear. It is the chaos of the Trump administration, the cowardice of Mike Rogers, and the corruption of the entire MAGA party—or it’s a politics built on the notion that it should be people, rather than corporations and special interests, who dictate what our future looks like,” he said.