Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed answered criticism from Vice President JD Vance on Friday by taking a racist swipe at Second Lady Usha Vance.
Vance was speaking at the Cleveland-Cliffs Middletown Works steel plant in his Ohio hometown, where his grandfather James Vance worked as a welder for 40 years. Vance called him “Papaw” and explained that he usually voted Democratic because he saw it as the party of union workers. That party, Vance said, is long gone.
Vance then turned to El-Sayed and his past defense of Sharia law.
“Not only should we have Sharia law, but if you criticize it, you’re a White supremacist,” Vance said. “That’s not my papaw’s Democrat Party.”
El-Sayed could have defended his position. He could have explained why he once tied criticism of Sharia law to white supremacy. Instead, he went after Vance’s wife.
“So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no…”
The insinuation was not terribly subtle. Usha Vance is an Indian-American woman and the daughter of Indian immigrants. El-Sayed was suggesting that Vance’s white, working-class grandfather would not have welcomed her into the family. Usha had nothing to do with Vance’s remarks, Sharia law or the Democratic Party’s drift away from union workers. El-Sayed dragged her into it for one reason: her race.
Some of his followers had no trouble understanding the joke. One replied that Papaw “wouldn’t even let Usha in the house at all.”
So much for subtlety.
El-Sayed has done this before. During an April podcast appearance, he repeatedly referred to the Vances’ children as “Brown kids,” claimed Vance believed his own children were less American, and urged Usha to leave her husband.
“JD Vance has Brown kids who he thinks are less American than everyone else,” El-Sayed said. “Usha, like, get out. Okay? Still got time.”
He also speculated about what Usha thought when her husband spoke, made a crack about her sleeping with him and brought up her pregnancy. Vance later called El-Sayed “crazy,” “odd” and unfit to represent Michigan in the Senate.
Now El-Sayed is back to treating Usha and her children as racial props whenever he wants to attack her husband. He did not challenge anything Vance said about his grandfather. He just invited his followers to imagine that a white steelworker from another generation would have rejected the Indian woman his grandson married.
Vance challenged El-Sayed over Sharia law. El-Sayed answered with Usha’s skin color. Michigan voters should not need any help figuring out who brought the racism into that fight.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY