Vice President JD Vance took aim Saturday at Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, sharply criticizing the Democrat and warning that he would be a “terrible senator” if voters send him to Washington.
“I think the guy’s crazy and would be a terrible senator for the people of Michigan,” Vance told Fox News, speaking days after El-Sayed’s notable win in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary and after the anti-Israel Democrat mocked him for “sucking up to power.”
“We’re going to make that case, and obviously, the people of Michigan are going to make their vote,” Vance added, also describing El-Sayed as an “odd guy.”
Vance said El-Sayed’s attacks were revealing because they focused on personality rather than policy. “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.
The 42-year-old vice president was responding to El-Sayed’s appearance on MS NOW, where the Michigan Democrat unloaded on him in pointed terms.
“Is that Peter Thiel’s boy with that Ohio charisma he’s got?” El-Sayed sneered. “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.”
El-Sayed’s jab invoked Vance’s long-running ties to Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who supported his early investment career and Senate ambitions, as well as Vance’s bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” and his past criticism of Donald Trump before joining Trump’s 2024 ticket.
The clash puts two combative political figures back in the spotlight. Both Vance and El-Sayed are known for aggressive rhetoric online and in public, and Republicans appear eager to keep the Michigan Democrat in the news as they try to counter Democratic strength in generic party preference polling.
El-Sayed’s shot came in response to Vance dissing him to Fox in a previous interview as “this guy who holds himself out as a working class hero as a guy who’s going to fight for the working class” who nevertheless is interested in “flooding his state and his country with low-wage immigrants.”
El-Sayed is running against former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who lost his last race by only 20,000 votes in 2024.
