Vance calls El-Sayed a "weasel" as Michigan Senate race heats up

Marquette, Michigan – After being called a "weasel" who should "shut his mouth" by Vice President JD Vance, Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed said he was something else instead.

"No, no, no. What you're talking about is a f****** Wolverine. You could take your Buckeye and go shove it somewhere else," El-Sayed, a Michigan alumnus, told a crowd of over 1,300 in the Upper Peninsula of the state. Vance was previously Ohio's senator and is an Ohio State University graduate.

Vance, President Trump and Republicans have sought to portray El-Sayed, an epidemiologist who has led city and county health departments in Michigan, as an Islamic extremist. Late Thursday night, Mr. Trump in a Truth Social video accused El-Sayed of being a "Muslim radical" and a "Muslim Brotherhood Member," though there is no evidence for either claim.

During his own rally in Monroe on Thursday, Vance criticized El-Sayed's past critical comments about America's history, and said "it's clear – Abdul doesn't love this community, Democrat or Republican."

"He wants to litigate ancient grievances with your tax dollars, and he wants to use the grievances of faraway lands to punish you. Well, I say, on November the third, send a message to Abdul El-Sayed: Punish him, don't send him to Washington D.C," Vance told the crowd.

Vance and El-Sayed have traded jabs before. After an El-Sayed post questioned whether Vance's grandfather would have accepted second lady Usha Vance, an Indian-American, Vance called him "very, very evil."

In response to Vance's latest comments, El-Sayed said the remarks were intended "to raise questions about my commitment to America."

"I got a front-row seat to what my life might have been had I not been born in America. So don't lecture me about America," El-Sayed countered, in reference to trips he has taken to Egypt.

"In America, we don't discriminate against people for who they love, how they identify, how they pray, the color of their skin. We believe in an America big enough for all of us. So don't you dare come from Ohio to lecture me about America. You don't know a damn thing about America," he added.

Holding the Michigan Senate seat is critical to Democrats' efforts to flip control of the U.S. Senate into their hands in November. But the race has turned especially contentious this month.

At a campaign stop in Iron Mountain on Thursday, El-Sayed said the race could go down "as one of the ugliest campaigns in modern history," a reference to Republican claims that El-Sayed has ties to foreign terrorist groups.

The claims in part stem from old social media posts made by his half-sister, first reported by the conservative outlet The Washington Free Beacon , when she wrote about their mother's activism in the Muslim Brotherhood during college in the 1970s.

In 2012, after a Muslim Brotherhood candidate won the presidential race in Egypt, she wrote that her family "has long been MB" but added that she has "always felt that it has navigated the political sphere poorly/destructively."

El-Sayed has denied any ties to the Islamist organization and has criticized the attacks as being tied to his Muslim faith.