Vance calls El-Sayed a "weasel" as Michigan Senate race heats up
CBS News · LC · trust 50/100
Updated on: October 16, 2026 / 6:39 PM EDT / CBS News
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. He said after his parents divorced, he was raised by his father and stepmother in Michigan and did not see his mother for years and did not talk with her about any activism in the 1970s.
"My mom and my sister are not running for office. I'm running for office. Judge me by my actions and my work, but please do not assume that because I might pray differently than anybody who's ever held this office, that somehow I am not deeply committed to this Constitution," he added.
Islamophobic rhetoric on the campaign trail, including claims that El-Sayed himself is a terrorist, has increased in recent weeks. Far-right instigator Jake Lang and others held signs that read "Abdul = Terrorist In A Suit" at the protest of an El-Sayed event last weekend. The Rogers campaign condemned Lang's appearance and said it has no affiliation with him.
Republican protesters also showed up outside the first two stops of El-Sayed's tour on Thursday. They held signs with messages criticizing his "Medicare for All" platform, declaring "The United States Will Always Be A Christian Nation" and urging voters to "Keep Terror Out Of Congress."
On the campaign trail with Rogers last weekend, Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana quipped that El-Sayed "sleeps in a Bin Laden jersey."
Asked by CBS News Thursday if he thinks El-Sayed is a terrorist, Rogers replied, "Look at the data. It's pretty clear."
But speaking to reporters in Detroit on Friday about the recent focus on El-Sayed's religion in the Senate race, Rogers said the race "has never been about how you pray."
"You get to pray any way you want, and I passionately believe that. It is about your ideology and how you think. We can't let this be a campaign deciding to hunker down because they say it's Islamophobic or racist, or fill-in-the-blank," he said, according to Fox 2 Detroit .
The Upper Peninsula of Michigan accounts for just 3% of the state's total population, and Republicans have easily won the area since 2016. Mr. Trump won all but one of the area's 15 counties in 2024.
El-Sayed took his campaign bus there anyway, and brought Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York with him as he tried to appeal to disaffected Republican and independent voters frustrated with the economy and the Iran War.
At packed stops, Ocasio-Cortez addressed the GOP attack ads and mailers targeting El-Sayed, and said they were trying to create a "caricature of him, so that you close your ears before you even hear what this man has to say."
Ocasio-Cortez transferred $1 million to El-Sayed's campaign. Asked about the contribution on Friday, she told reporters it's "the first time that I've made a transfer of this kind."
"I believe so deeply in how important this state is. I believe so…
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