Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed drew sharp criticism from Republicans and even some Democrats after social media posts that critics called racist toward Second Lady Usha Vance and demeaning toward a female Trump aide.
El-Sayed, who is running against Republican former Congressman Mike Rogers, posted a message referencing Vice President JD Vance's wife and her Indian heritage after Vance criticized El-Sayed at a rally in Ohio. The post read: "So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no..." The implication, as critics read it, was that Vance's grandfather, whom Vance calls "Papaw", would not have accepted a woman of Indian descent. El-Sayed's campaign did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital to clarify what he meant.
The post landed the same day Vance took aim at El-Sayed during the Ohio rally, criticizing what Vance described as El-Sayed's stated adherence to Sharia law, a practice, Vance suggested, that would have been foreign to his own grandfather. El-Sayed's response was to drag Usha Vance into the exchange, a move that turned a policy dispute into something far more personal.
That was not the only post that drew fire. Earlier the same Saturday, El-Sayed took a shot at Natalie Harp, an aide to President Donald Trump. After Trump blasted El-Sayed at a rally for campaigning alongside far-left commentator Hasan Piker, who has been attributed with saying "America deserved 9/11", El-Sayed responded by directing a message at Harp rather than at Trump himself.
His post read: "Natalie, I think he's had a little too much iPad for the week. He needs his rest." The dig at Harp came amid weeks of online speculation from left-leaning media figures and Democrats implying an improper relationship between Harp and the president. By singling her out, El-Sayed appeared to amplify that narrative rather than engage with the substance of Trump's criticism.
The backlash was swift and came from multiple directions. Former Florida state Rep. Ben Graber posted on X:
"El Sayed is now attacking Wives [sic] of US leaders? What a guy"
Rep. Brandon Gill, a Texas Republican, zeroed in on what he saw as the underlying assumption in El-Sayed's Vance post. Gill wrote on X:
"Why does Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed just assume that all White midwestern grandparents are racist?"
It is a fair question. El-Sayed's post only works as a dig if you assume that a white man's rural grandfather would reject an Indian daughter-in-law on racial grounds, a sweeping generalization about millions of Americans in states like Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. That a Senate candidate running in Michigan would broadcast that assumption about his own potential constituents says something about how he views the voters he is asking to elect him.
Commentator Ryan Girdusky made the point bluntly on X: "If you're a rural White American living in Michigan, just remember El-Sayed believes you're a racist." Journalist Emily Schrader was more direct still, responding to El-Sayed's post with: "You are a racist creep."
El-Sayed's troubles were not limited to Republicans. An X account run by Democrats who support his opponent, Mike Rogers, posted a blistering response that tied the Vance and Harp posts to a broader pattern. The account's message read in part: "This is why there were ads in the primary correctly highlighting how sexist and misogynistic Abdul is. He has so much contempt for women." The post urged voters to "reject Abdul El-Sayed."
When a candidate's own party allies are running ads calling him sexist during a primary, and pointing to his conduct as proof, the problem is not a single bad post. It is a pattern. El-Sayed has drawn scrutiny before for his associations with controversial figures, and the latest episode only deepened those concerns.
GOP strategist Matt Whitlock posted screenshots of both El-Sayed posts and offered a blunt assessment:
"Just a bad campaign, bad candidate, bad instincts. Sitting at home on a Saturday morning tweeting bad takes that any normal campaign would shut down."
Whitlock's critique cut to something deeper than a social media misstep. A functioning campaign has staff who flag problems before they go public. A candidate with sound political instincts does not respond to policy criticism by mocking the ethnicity of his critic's spouse or piling on a female staffer already targeted by online innuendo. The fact that no one on El-Sayed's team stopped either post suggests either that no one tried or that the candidate did not care to listen.
Tudor Dixon, the Republican former gubernatorial candidate in Michigan, framed the issue as one of character. Dixon has previously raised alarms about what an El-Sayed Senate victory would mean, and she did not hold back this time either:
"He goes after Usha. He goes after Natalie [Harp]. This coward picks on women who are not in his fight. Imagine how he would treat female staffers in the halls of Congress."
Dixon's point lands because of the pattern it identifies. El-Sayed was challenged by JD Vance and Donald Trump, two men, and chose to respond by targeting their wives and aides instead. He did not engage Vance's criticism on the merits. He did not rebut Trump's remarks about Hasan Piker. He went after the women closest to them.
Fox News Digital reached out to El-Sayed's campaign, the vice president's office, and a representative for Usha Vance. El-Sayed's campaign did not return the request for comment. The vice president's office did not immediately respond.
The silence is notable. El-Sayed had no trouble posting provocative messages on a Saturday morning, but when reporters asked him to explain what he meant, specifically, what he was implying about Usha Vance's ethnicity and JD Vance's family, he had nothing to say. A candidate confident in his own words would clarify them. A candidate who knows he stepped over a line stays quiet and hopes the news cycle moves on.
This is not the first time El-Sayed's conduct has raised questions about his judgment and the company he keeps. He has faced scrutiny for sharing a stage with a Pakistani cleric involved in serious controversy, and his campaign messaging on taxes has drawn its own contradictions. The Vance and Harp posts fit a pattern: provoke, deflect, and refuse to answer for it.
El-Sayed is running to represent Michigan in the United States Senate. His opponent is Mike Rogers, a former congressman. Michigan voters will decide whether a candidate who responds to policy criticism by mocking a woman's ethnicity and targeting female aides belongs in that body. But the fact that even Democrats aligned with his opponent are calling his behavior sexist and divisive suggests the answer is already forming, and it is not the one El-Sayed wants.
When your own side is running ads against your character, the problem is not the other party. It is the man in the mirror.
