Vance to El-Sayed: ‘Keep My Wife’s Name the Hell Out of Your Mouth’

Vice President JD Vance laid into Abdul El-Sayed during an address in Michigan on Monday, telling the Democratic Senate candidate to “keep my wife’s name the hell out of your mouth.”

Read more Financial Times Claims Gaza Has the Highest Rate of Child Amputees. Where’s the Evidence?

Vance’s comment represents an escalation in his ongoing feud with El-Sayed, who has accused the vice president of racism and Islamophobia, and repeatedly suggested that Second Lady Usha Vance should leave her husband.

“Whatever you want to talk about, Abdul, keep my wife’s name the hell out of your mouth because she’s way out of your league,” Vance said during an event supporting Michigan’s Republican nominee for senate, Mike Rogers.

In a 2022 speech, El-Sayed criticized a 2010 Oklahoma ballot measure that would have formally banned the imposition of Sharia law in the state. El-Sayed, who if elected would be the first Muslim to serve in the U.S. Senate, argued that the ballot measure was motivated by white supremacy. Asked about his comments during a recent Fox News interview, El-Sayed compared Sharia law to Catholic canon law and said he did not want to impose his religious views on anyone else.

During a speech last week, Vance attacked El-Sayed for attributing opposition to Sharia law to white supremacy.

“I would love to go back in time and tell my papaw, that there is a man who claims to stand for working people, who says not only should we have sharia law, but if you criticize it, you are a white supremacist,” Vance previously said, in response to El-Sayed’s comments.

El-Sayed responded by invoking Vance’s wife, who is Hindu and has two Indian parents who immigrated to the U.S.

“So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no…” El-Sayed said in a post on X. Usha, in an interview with Fox News, said El-Sayed’s comment made her laugh, and that the vice president’s family has been nothing but kind to her throughout their relationship.

Speaking with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Monday night, El-Sayed blamed President Trump for bringing spouses into the conversation.

Read more Minneapolis to Madison: Moving a Home-Based Business Without Missing a Beat

When asked if he believes political spouses should be off-limits, El-Sayed said he’d “rather not talk about spouses at all” but that Trump opened the door by posting a photo of him alongside his wife, who was wearing a hijab.

“The point that I have been making about his wife [Usha Vance] is that he believes in a political philosophy that says that some people are somehow more American than others,” El-Sayed said to Collins. “But why would you invoke your long-since-passed grandfather to make an argument about me if you’re not trying to take us back to a time when people like me were less than normal? But then that raises the question about who else may not be normal in that kind of an America.”

El-Sayed has also faced criticism over his response to previous acts of Islamic terror.

After a man drove a truck into a Michigan synagogue earlier this year in what the FBI described as an act of Hezbollah-inspired terrorism, El-Sayed said there was no justification for the attack, but noted that “hurt people hurt people.” At the end of August, when speaking to the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus, he apologized for his comments, saying he should have condemned the attack, “full stop.”

El-Sayed also came under fire after an audio recording leaked in which he told donors he was hesitant to comment on the assassination of Iranian Ayatollah Khameini because residents of the heavily Muslim Michigan city of Dearborn might be mourning his death.

Vance doubled down on Monday, telling the crowd, “What I see is a man who has sympathy and compassion for people who share his religion but have nothing for people who don’t. That is the root of this terrible evil, I believe, in the United States of America that is on the rise.”

In response, El-Sayed offered his own definition of evil.

“Evil is ripping healthcare away from working people in exchange for tax breaks for billionaires,” he said. “Evil is making people pay more for groceries and gas while pushing for trade wars and actual war. Evil is dividing people for your own gain. Evil is selling out your morals for a little bit of power.”

El-Sayed will face off against Rogers in this November’s midterm election. Current Democratic Michigan Senator Gary Peters is retiring, leaving the seat vacant and giving Republicans a clear shot at securing a Michigan senate seat for the first time in 26 years.

Current polling shows a tight race between the two candidates, with El-Sayed leading by a few points.

Read more A Calmer Move Starts in the Kids’ Rooms