JD Vance steps up extreme attacks on Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed

Vice President JD Vance sharpened his rhetoric against Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, at a Tuesday rally in Howell. Vance tied El-Sayed to the leftwing unrest in Paris, which has produced thousands of arrests, and asserted that El-Sayed and the commentator Hasan Piker would join rioters in Detroit or New York if unrest broke out there. He described what he saw in France as a cancer that had corrupted El-Sayed, according to The Guardian.

El-Sayed would be the first Muslim in the Senate if he wins next week. President Donald Trump has already called him a jihadist, and on Sunday said he was on the side of terrorists and kept using his middle name, Mohamed. Republican Mike Rogers is competing for the seat. Vance had earlier cast El-Sayed as a representative of evil, and El-Sayed replied that denying people healthcare and affordable groceries is the real evil.

El-Sayed told his own rally that opponents hope attacks on his name and faith will distract voters from costs they struggle to pay. Researchers say this campaign has brought the heaviest concentration of Islamophobic rhetoric in American electoral politics since the period after 9/11.

Summarized by PolitiKool from The Guardian’s reporting. Read the full story at The Guardian →