JD Vance has escalated his inflammatory attacks on Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for US Senate in Michigan who has faced an onslaught of Islamophobia, claiming he would lead rioters in “burning down” Detroit.
El-Sayed, who would become the country’s first Muslim senator if he wins next week’s election, has been branded a “jihadist” by Donald Trump , the US president.
Vance, the vice-president, has already alleged El-Sayed was a representative of “terrible evil” who fights for “one group at the expense of others” – prompting El-Sayed to respond it was “evil” to deprive people of healthcare and affordable groceries.
At a campaign stop on Tuesday, Vance went further.
Speaking to the crowd in Howell, Michigan, Vance sought to connect El-Sayed’s politics to the leftwing protests in Paris that have led to thousands of arrests. Describing as “hordes of masked rioters, many from distant lands, taking over historic city centers”, the vice president also played up El-Sayed’s relationship with leftwing political commentator Hasan Piker .
“The scene of destruction in Paris may be an ocean away, but ask yourselves: are they really so hard to imagine here in the United States of America?” Vance said. “And I guarantee you, if those rioters were burning down New York, or Detroit, the Hasan Pikers and El-Sayeds would be right there leading them and cheering them on.”
He continued: “What we saw in France – the hatred, the ingratitude, the desire to destroy rather than the desire to build – that exact same cancer is what has corrupted Abdul El-Sayed.”
Trump and his allies have sought to recast the demonstrations in France, which began as student protests against crumbling schools and the soaring cost of living , as evidence of the dangers of immigration and the erosion of western civilization.
Vance has made several visits to Michigan as Republican candidate Mike Rogers seeks to win the seat El-Sayed is vying for, launching a series of extreme attacks on the Democrat.
Trump, on a visit to the state on Sunday, accused El-Sayed of being “on the side of the terrorists” and said Michigan needed to “stand up and fight” against him. He has also repeatedly used his middle name, Mohamed.
El-Sayed told a rally of his own this weekend: “They think that by pointing at my name and my faith, that somehow you’re going to ignore the fact that you can’t afford your gas or your groceries, can’t see a doctor.”
Researchers have suggested this midterm elections campaign has seen the most concentrated wave of Islamophobic rhetoric in US electoral politics since the aftermath of 9/11.
“I really think everyone needs to pay attention to this cordinated [sic] campaign to delegitimatize Muslim Americans – not just as citizens but as humans,” Chris Murphy, the Democratic US Senator for Connecticut, wrote on X on Tuesday morning.
Responding to recent remarks by Robert F Kennedy Jr, Trump’s health and human services secretary, who suggested “five hundred million Arabs in the world” do not contribute to science or literature, Murphy said: “These increasingly hysterical attacks are a prelude to Republicans bringing us to a very, very dark place after the election.”
