Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed stirred controversy Sunday after publicly questioning President Trump’s marriage to first lady Melania Trump, describing the relationship as “a bit of a rocky road” during a television interview.
El-Sayed made the remarks on CNN’s “State of the Union,” one day after Trump shared a side-by-side image featuring himself with Melania Trump next to a photo of El-Sayed and his wife, Sarah Jukaku.
The comparison was posted with the caption, “Two VERY DIFFERENT America’s (sic).”
“Actually, Sarah and I like each other,” El-Sayed told host Jake Tapper. “I don’t know about the first lady and the president, but, from what I have heard, it’s a bit of a rocky road.”
El-Sayed, who describes himself as a progressive and did not receive an endorsement from the Democratic Socialists of America, narrowly beat moderate Rep. Haley Stevens (D) in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary last week.
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Donald and Melania Trump have been married since 2005 and share one son, Barron.
El-Sayed and Jukaku, both physicians, married in 2006 after meeting as students at the University of Michigan and getting engaged during their freshman year.
The couple lives in Ann Arbor and has two daughters, Emmalee and Serene.
The leftist also sarcastically agreed with Trump’s post, and said he was right about the pair representing very different Americas.
“Yeah, he’s right — you’ve got two different visions of America — one in which your overlords are two people who don’t like each other but joint in the interest of making billions of dollars off of you,” El-Sayed told Tapper.
“Or two people who genuinely love each other, enjoyed some pancakes together, want to come together to build the kind of America where they can raise a family, and know that that family is going to have the good things,” El-Sayed added.
He added that Trump’s version is the current reality Americans are living in now, pointing to rises in everyday costs like gas and groceries, and questioned whether parents can honestly tell their kids they’ll have it better than they did.
If elected in November, El-Sayed would become the first Muslim senator in US history.
