JD Vance Steps Up Extreme Attacks on Democratic Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed | 2026 US midterm elections

JD Vance has stepped up his incendiary attacks on Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for US Senate in Michigan who has faced a wave of Islamophobia, saying he would lead rioters to “burn down” Detroit.

El-Sayed, who will become the country’s first Muslim senator if he wins next week’s election, has been called a “jihadist” by Donald Trump, the US president.

Vance, the vice president, previously claimed that El-Sayed was a representative of “terrible evil” who fights for “one group at the expense of others” – prompting El-Sayed to respond that it was “wrong” to deprive people of affordable health care and groceries.

During a campaign stop Tuesday, Vance went further.

Speaking to the crowd in Howell, Michigan, Vance sought to connect El-Sayed’s policies to left-wing protests in Paris that led to thousands of arrests. Describing “hordes of masked rioters, many from distant lands, taking over historic city centers,” the vice president also highlighted El-Sayed’s relationship with left-wing political commentator Hasan Piker.

“The scene of destruction in Paris may be an ocean away, but ask yourself: Are they really so hard to imagine here in the United States of America? Vance said. “And I guarantee you that if these rioters burned down New York or Detroit, the Hasan Pikers and the El-Sayeds would be there, leading and cheering them on. »

He continued: “What we saw in France – the hatred, the ingratitude, the desire to destroy rather than the desire to build – is exactly the same cancer that corrupted Abdul El-Sayed. »

Trump and his allies have sought to cast the protests in France, which began as student protests over crumbling schools and soaring costs of living, as evidence of the dangers of immigration and the erosion of Western civilization.

Vance has made several visits to Michigan as Republican candidate Mike Rogers seeks to win the seat El-Sayed is fighting for, launching a series of extreme attacks against the Democrat.

Trump, during a visit to the state Sunday, accused El-Sayed of being “on the side of the terrorists” and said Michigan must “stand up and fight” against him. He also repeatedly used his middle name, Mohamed.

El-Sayed said at a rally this weekend: “They think that by pointing the finger at my name and my faith, you’re going to ignore the fact that you can’t afford your gas or your groceries, that you can’t see a doctor. »

Researchers have suggested that this midterm election campaign was marked by the most concentrated wave of Islamophobic rhetoric in American electoral politics since the aftermath of 9/11.

“I really think everyone needs to pay attention to this coordinated (sic) campaign to delegitimize Muslim Americans – not just as citizens but as humans,” Chris Murphy, Democratic U.S. senator from Connecticut, wrote on X Tuesday morning.

Responding to recent remarks by Robert F Kennedy Jr, Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary, who suggested that “five hundred million Arabs in the world” are not contributing to science or literature, Murphy said: “These increasingly hysterical attacks are a prelude to Republicans taking us to a very, very dark place after the election. »