Vance’s mother says she’d ‘probably punch’ El-Sayed

Beverly Aikins said Wednesday that she would “probably punch” Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed for past comments he made about her son, Vice President Vance.

In an interview on “ Tomi Lahren is Fearless ,” Fox News host Tomi Lahren showed Aikins a clip of El-Sayed stating, “Can you imagine, he’s got brown kids, at some point he’s going to have a really awkward conversation with his kids, like, you made your career hating people who are different.”

“I think that man’s an idiot,” Aikins said about the video. “Those are my babies. I love those babies. I would do anything for them. I love Usha as if she were my own daughter.”

“I don’t pay attention to people like that,” she added.

Vance’s relationship with his mother was described in his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” which detailed his upbringing in rural Kentucky alongside Aikins’s struggle with addiction.

Aikins — who attended the 2024 inauguration of Vance and President Trump — celebrated her 10-year sobriety milestone in 2025 at the White House’s Roosevelt Room with her son’s family.

In the interview, Lahren mentioned another comment by El-Sayed, who wrote on the social platform X , “So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no…”

Aikins said people who made comments like those must be “jealous” of the vice president’s family.

“It makes me mad, honestly,” she concluded. “But in the long run I’m not going to do anything about it. I mean, you know, I’d probably punch the guy if I’d ever seen him, and then that would get me in trouble.”

The feud between the two started when Vance labeled El-Sayed as “very, very evil” while at a campaign rally in Detroit on Monday.

“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.

El-Sayed responded in an CNN interview the same day, saying, “Well, let me tell you what’s evil. 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. What’s evil is to do that, so that you can pass a tax cut for billionaires.”