El-Sayed could become the country’s first Muslim senator if he wins
At a Tuesday campaign stop in Howell, Michigan, Vice President JD Vance claimed that Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and political commentator Hasan Piker would be “right there leading them and cheering them on” if rioters were burning down New York or Detroit. Speaking to the crowd in Howell, Vance sought to connect El-Sayed’s politics to the protests in Paris that The Guardian described as leftwing and reported had led to thousands of arrests.
Vance at the rally in Howell, Michigan, on Tuesday. Photograph: Getty Images
El-Sayed is the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Michigan, where Republican candidate Mike Rogers is seeking the seat. If El-Sayed wins next week’s election, he would become the country’s first Muslim senator. The Guardian said he had faced an onslaught of Islamophobia, and Vance has made several visits to Michigan as Rogers campaigns for the seat.
Earlier, Vance had alleged that El-Sayed was a representative of “terrible evil” who fights for “one group at the expense of others.” El-Sayed responded that it was “evil” to deprive people of healthcare and affordable groceries.
During his Tuesday remarks, Vance described the demonstrators in the Paris protests that The Guardian described as leftwing as “hordes of masked rioters, many from distant lands, taking over historic city centers.” He asked: “The scene of destruction in Paris may be an ocean away, but ask yourselves: are they really so hard to imagine here in the United States of America?”
Vance said: “And I guarantee you, if those rioters were burning down New York, or Detroit, the Hasan Pikers and El-Sayeds would be right there leading them 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 – that exact same cancer is what has corrupted Abdul El-Sayed.”
The Guardian reported that the demonstrations in France began as student protests against crumbling schools and the soaring cost of living. It said Donald Trump and his allies had recast them as evidence of the dangers of immigration and the erosion of Western civilization.
Vance also raised El-Sayed’s relationship with Hasan Piker, whom The Guardian described as a leftwing political commentator.
During a visit to Michigan on Sunday, Trump said El-Sayed was “on the side of the terrorists” and that the state needed to “stand up and fight” against him. The report also said Trump repeatedly used El-Sayed’s middle name, Mohamed. Trump had previously branded El-Sayed a “jihadist.”
At a rally of his own over the weekend, El-Sayed said: “They think that by pointing at my name and my faith, that somehow you’re going to ignore the fact that you can’t afford your gas or your groceries, can’t see a doctor.”
Researchers have suggested that this midterm election campaign has seen the most concentrated wave of Islamophobic rhetoric in US electoral politics since the aftermath of 9/11.
Democratic U.S. Senator for Connecticut Chris Murphy wrote on X on Tuesday morning: “I really think everyone needs to pay attention to this cordinated [sic] campaign to delegitimatize Muslim Americans – not just as citizens but as humans.” Murphy was responding to recent comments from Trump’s health and human services secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who suggested that “five hundred million Arabs in the world” do not contribute to science or literature. Murphy wrote: “These increasingly hysterical attacks are a prelude to Republicans bringing us to a very, very dark place after the election.”