Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed keeps picking fights he didn’t have to start.
His campaign just made things considerably worse with a pair of posts that had nothing to do with his Republican opponent.
And now El-Sayed is getting torched for what critics are calling a creepy fixation on other people’s wives.
From the Papaw Post to a Doctored Meme
The whole disgraceful episode traces back to Vice President JD Vance, who called out El-Sayed during a rally in Ohio over the Michigan Democrat’s past comments linking criticism of Sharia law to white supremacy.
Vance put it plainly: “He once argued, not too long ago, that criticisms of Sharia law were rooted in White supremacy.” Then Vance made it personal in a way that would set off the chain reaction. “I’d 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’re a White supremacist. That’s not my Papaw’s Democratic Party, my friends.”
El-Sayed’s response was not to challenge Vance on the substance. He went after Usha Vance instead.
“So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no…” El-Sayed posted on X. Critics immediately read it as a racial dig at the second lady’s Indian heritage, suggesting that Vance’s Appalachian grandfather wouldn’t have accepted a woman of Indian descent. The post drew a wave of backlash and accusations of racism.
Usha Vance responded with considerably more grace than the attack deserved. “I have to admit, I kind of laughed,” she told Fox & Friends in an interview. “Because yes, I never met JD’s Mamaw and Papaw. But I do know and love the children that they raised, his mom, his aunt and uncle. And they have never been anything but incredibly loving.”
That should have been the end of it. El-Sayed kept going.
The Campaign That Keeps Throwing Bricks
Less than a week after the Usha Vance post generated national headlines for all the wrong reasons, El-Sayed’s campaign turned its attention to White House aide Natalie Harp.
The hook was President Trump’s edict renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America during a trade dispute with Canada. The El-Sayed campaign waded into the debate on X, posting a doctored image of the official White House webpage for First Lady Melania Trump — with Melania’s name crossed out and replaced with Harp’s. “If we’re just renaming everything now… When are we making this official?” the campaign wrote.
The post played into weeks of innuendo from left-wing media figures and Democrats online implying an improper relationship between Trump and Harp. El-Sayed’s campaign made that innuendo explicit in meme form.
Conservatives on social media did not let it slide.
GOP communicator Matt Whitlock posted on X: “This is just such a weak, phoned-in effort. My four year-old could come up with better burns than this. Weird how much time this campaign spends talking about other people’s wives. When Abdul’s not talking about (and clearly thinking a lot about) the vice president and his wife, apparently he’s thinking about President Trump and his wife?”
Journalist James David Dickson was blunter: “That boy Abdul is drowning, and his team keeps throwing him bricks.”
Conservative advocacy group Michigan Forward asked simply: “So this is just gross, right?”
Tudor Dixon, the Republican former gubernatorial candidate in Michigan, offered the sharpest critique of the pattern: “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.”
El-Sayed’s campaign did not return Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
What This Pattern Actually Reveals
El-Sayed is not running against Usha Vance. He is not running against Natalie Harp. His opponent in the Michigan Senate general election is Republican Mike Rogers. But twice in roughly one week, his campaign chose to target women who have no role in his race — once with what critics read as a racial implication, once with tabloid-level innuendo.
And both times, the targets were women connected to the men who criticized him on the merits.
JD Vance challenged El-Sayed on Sharia law. El-Sayed went after Usha. Trump attacked El-Sayed’s record and vision for America. El-Sayed’s campaign went after Harp. The pattern is not subtle. When confronted by men on policy, El-Sayed pivots to the women nearest them.
That’s not a campaign strategy. That’s a tell.
El-Sayed won the Democrat primary for Michigan’s open US Senate seat by defeating establishment-backed Representative Haley Stevens. Chuck Schumer and national Democrats moved to accommodate him after that win, a stark contrast to how the Republican establishment has treated some of its own MAGA-aligned nominees. But the general election is a different animal, and the race against Rogers is extremely close.
El-Sayed has not made things easier on himself. His association with controversial streamer Hasan Piker, his hedged comments about the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and now two consecutive posts targeting women who aren’t his opponent have given Rogers and national Republicans a steady supply of ammunition.
A Fox News poll taken after the primary showed Rogers leading El-Sayed 51% to 47%.
El-Sayed has argued that Vance’s “Papaw” comments implied some people are “more American than others because they can point to their Papaw who was here earlier.” That’s a fair policy argument about immigration and belonging. He could have made it. Instead he dragged Usha Vance into the exchange and let critics spend the next several days talking about whether the post was racist.
And then he did the same thing again with a different target.
There’s a broader question worth asking here. El-Sayed has built his campaign around a left-wing economic message, opposition to Trump’s trade policies, and an appeal to Michigan’s large Arab-American community. Those are real constituencies. But the voters he needs to win a general election in a competitive state are not primarily looking for candidates who post doctored images of White House web pages to insinuate affairs.
They’re looking for someone who can talk about their lives. Gas prices. Jobs. The cost of groceries. El-Sayed has tried to make those arguments. But every time he picks a fight with a woman who isn’t running against him, he hands his opponents a story that has nothing to do with kitchen-table concerns.
The El-Sayed campaign’s fixation on the wives and female aides of political opponents is not just a tactical error. It reflects something about how this candidate responds under pressure. Vance came at him on substance. Trump came at him on vision. Both times, El-Sayed reached for the women standing nearby.
Voters in Michigan will have to decide what that says about the man who wants to represent them in the US Senate.
Sources: Fox News Digital; Fox & Friends (Fox News Channel)