JD Vance calls Michigan’s El-Sayed “Crazy,” says he’d be a “terrible senator”
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US Vice President JD Vance on Saturday called Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed “crazy” and predicted he “would be a terrible senator for the people of Michigan.”
Speaking on Fox News’ “Saturday in America” show, Vance responded days after El-Sayed’s narrow victory in the state’s Democratic primary and after the progressive candidate publicly mocked him.
“I think the guy’s crazy and would be a terrible senator for the people of Michigan,” Vance said.
“We’re going to make that case, and obviously, the people of Michigan are going to make their vote.”
He also described El-Sayed as an “odd guy.”
El-Sayed, a former public health official and progressive, narrowly defeated Rep. Haley Stevens in the Aug. 4 primary, winning roughly 48.5% to 47.5% in a contest that drew national attention as a test of the Democratic Party’s left wing.
He will face Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers in the November general election for the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Gary Peters.
Vance was reacting in part to El-Sayed’s recent comments on MS NOW, where the Michigan candidate dismissed the vice president.
“Is that Peter Thiel’s boy with that Ohio charisma he’s got?” El-Sayed said.
“That guy. I think we’ve had enough of him. The last thing that he said that made any sense was ‘Hillbilly Elegy’, after he said that Donald Trump had no business being president of anything. That was the last time he made sense, and then he decided to suck up to power.”
Vance argued that El-Sayed’s personal attacks revealed a lack of substance.
“I think that it’s telling that instead of talking about what he wants to do to make the lives of Michiganders better, he takes personal insults at me. I’m the vice president. It comes with the territory,” he said.
He added that El-Sayed “has also gone after my kids. He’s just kind of an odd guy.”
On policy, Vance criticized El-Sayed as someone who “claims to stand for working people, and yet he opposed Donald Trump’s policies that have quite literally saved the Michigan auto industry.”
Vance said El-Sayed is “not a guy who wants a prosperous economy where auto workers and everybody else can actually raise a family,” arguing instead that the candidate favors taxing people to fund “Democratic Party-favored interest groups.”
