Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed decided the best way to launch his campaign was to go after JD Vance’s wife Usha and their children — an interracial family, by the way — with comments so vile we’d need a content warning if we printed them in full. And when reporters gave him every opportunity to walk it back, to apologize, to do the bare minimum a decent human being would do, El-Sayed looked into the camera and said he “did it out of love.”
Ah yes, love. The same defense every bully has used since the playground. “I’m not hitting you, I’m loving you aggressively.” Somebody get this man a Hallmark card that says “Sorry I insulted your biracial family — but my heart was in the right place.”
Abdul El-Sayed, who wants to represent the state of Michigan in the United States Senate, went on the “Allen Analysis Show” podcast and stunned listeners by called the Vide President “evil.” El-Sayed told the host, “What do you think is going through Usha’s head when he talks? She’s like, ‘Damn, I have to sleep with him.'”
But the awful comments didn’t stop there. El-Sayed continued, “I guess she’s pregnant so something is happening. Can you imagine, he’s got Brown kids, at some point he’s going to have a really awkward conversation with his kids, like, you made your career hating people who are different.”
El-Sayed pushed the envelope even further by claiming JD Vance’s political stances is “incoherent” because of the racial makeup of his family with his wife and children and that the Vice-President must be “corrupted” by power. “He’s got to look at his kids and be like, ‘Yeah, those are Brown kids, they’re mine,'” El-Sayed said. “‘You know what I mean? And I had Brown kids. I had Brown kids?'” concluded El-Sayed.
Usha Vance is an accomplished attorney. She’s the daughter of Indian immigrants. She and JD have built a beautiful family together. And some guy running for Senate in Michigan decided that family was fair game for attack — and then couldn’t even muster the basic decency to apologize when the whole country heard what he said.
Now, let’s play our favorite game: Imagine If a Republican Said This.
Imagine a Republican Senate candidate made vile comments about a Democrat’s interracial family. About their spouse’s ethnicity. About their children. Go ahead, picture it. You know exactly what would happen. CNN would run a 72-hour special. MSNBC would declare it a national emergency. The New York Times would publish fourteen op-eds before breakfast. Every Democrat in Congress would be on the floor demanding a resolution. The candidate’s career would be over before the news cycle ended.
But Abdul El-Sayed is a Democrat. So the rules are different. The media barely touched it. No wall-to-wall coverage. No demands for resignation. No soul-searching segments about “the state of our discourse.” Just crickets and a guy who thinks “I did it out of love” is an acceptable answer.
This is the party that lectures us — daily, hourly, by the minute — about tolerance. About diversity. About respecting families of all backgrounds. About how *they’re* the ones who protect minorities from the big bad Republicans. And here’s their Senate candidate in a major swing state attacking a biracial family and refusing to apologize.
The “out of love” defense is maybe the most insulting part. It’s not even a real apology. It’s not even a non-apology apology. It’s a middle finger wrapped in a prayer shawl. He’s telling you he meant every word, he’d say it again, and you’re the problem for being offended.
We’ve watched Democrats spend years building an entire political identity around the idea that families are sacred, that children are off-limits, that attacking someone’s spouse is beyond the pale. Remember when they lost their minds because someone made a joke about a politician’s dog? But JD Vance’s wife and kids? Open season, apparently. As long as you whisper “love” while you do it.
Here’s what El-Sayed is really telling Michigan voters: he doesn’t have a platform. He doesn’t have ideas. He doesn’t have a single compelling reason why anyone should send him to Washington. So he’s going for the cheapest, lowest shot he can find — attacking a man’s family — and hoping it plays well enough with the base to carry him through a primary.
Michigan deserves better than this. The Senate deserves better than this. And frankly, the Vance family deserves an apology that’s never coming, because the guy who owes it thinks cruelty is a form of affection.
We’ve got a word for people who hurt others and call it love. We don’t usually elect them to the Senate. But then again, this is the modern Democratic Party — where the rules only apply to everyone else, decency is a costume you wear on camera, and going after a man’s wife and children is just another Tuesday.
“Out of love.” Sure, pal. We believe you. Just like we believe the billionaires funding your party actually care about the working class.