HOWELL, Mich. — Vice President JD Vance sharply attacked Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed during a Michigan visit Tuesday, calling him a “psychopath” and accusing him of being “ashamed” of the state, promoting “anti-white racial hatred” and threatening the region’s auto industry.
With Election Day just one week away, Vance used the high-profile appearance to portray El-Sayed as an unacceptable extremist and urge swing voters to support Republican Mike Rogers. Recent polls show El-Sayed and Rogers locked in a close contest, with the Democrat either narrowly ahead or effectively tied.
“Abdul El Sayed is a little bit of a psychopath, and we’re going to just try to make the argument as well as we can and help Mike out a little bit,” Vance said before boarding Air Force Two for a rally attended by several hundred people outside Detroit.
Vance also accused El-Sayed of engaging in “explicitly anti-white racial hatred,” saying the Democrat may have done so “more than any Democrat running in the nation.” He described El-Sayed as someone who “seems to love to traffic in racial hatred.”
Vance offered no additional details to support his accusation that El-Sayed is racist.
After arriving in Michigan, Vance told a cheering crowd that El-Sayed was an extremist.
Vance also claimed that if recent rioting in France spread to Detroit, El-Sayed would be “right there and cheering them on.”
“Abdul El Sayed was born just north of Detroit in a town called Rochester Hills. Yet he is claiming to be, and I quote, ‘an immigrant from North Africa.’ For decades, he’s gone even further than that. He told people he is an Egyptian citizen,” Vance said.
“Why? Why would you tell people that you were not from the community that you’re actually from? It’s an insane claim to make… [He is] a man who would lie, who is so ashamed of this state that he would lie about being an immigrant from another continent,” Vance added.
Vance further accused El-Sayed of supporting what he called the “green new scam,” warning that the policies would “kill the auto industry of this state.” He also criticized El-Sayed for campaigning with Hassan Piker, whom Vance described as his “best friend” and accused of saying that “we deserved 9/11.”
The attacks came as El-Sayed held a 2.5-point advantage over Rogers in the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls.
Vance dismissed former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s strong opposition to Rogers, a hawkish former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Vance called Rogers “fundamentally a decent guy” and “the kind of public servant that you want in Washington, D.C.”
Vance also declined to repeat President Trump’s description of El-Sayed, who is Muslim, as a “jihadist.” Instead, he said, “I don’t know what’s in the guy’s heart. I just know he has a lot of weird friends.”
El-Sayed’s campaign did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
