U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed had a sharp-elbowed response on Sunday after President Donald Trump posted an image on social media comparing his family to that of the Michigan Democrat.
On Saturday, Trump shared an image featuring himself and First Lady Melania Trump on one side and El-Sayed with his wife, Dr. Sarah Jukaku, a psychiatrist, on the other. The image included the caption “Two VERY DIFFERENT America’s [sic].”
Asked about the post on Sunday on CNN, El-Sayed leaned into Trump drawing a contrast between his family and the president’s.
“Yeah, he’s right,” the former public health official said about Trump’s idea of two “very different” Americas.
“One in which your overlords are two people who don’t like each other, but join in the interest of making billions of dollars off of you —or two people who genuinely love each other, enjoyed some pancakes together, want to come together to build the kind of America where they can raise a family and know that that family is going to have the good things,” he said.
open image in gallery“So yes, you’ve got two different visions of America,” he added. “Donald Trump’s vision is the one you’re living in right now. Can you afford your gas? Can you afford your groceries?”
The Independent has contacted the White House for comment.
El-Sayed has faced repeated attacks from the president and his allies, which have veered into profanity, false claims and outright Islamophobia.
The president’s post on Saturday used El-Sayed’s full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, echoing a common rhetorical tactic the Republican has used in attacks against his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, whom he makes a point to call Barack Hussein Obama, often writing his middle name in all caps on social media.
Trump rose to prominence in national politics in the 2010s in part by fueling the racist birther conspiracy theory that Obama was not born in the U.S. and by calling for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” during his first campaign. The first and second Trump administrations later attempted to restrict travelers from numerous Muslim-majority countries.
After El-Sayed’s narrow primary win this week, the president has attacked the Michigan Democrat repeatedly along similar lines.
open image in galleryIn a speech in Las Vegas, the president accused El-Sayed of being part of a wave of “communists” who would bring “squalor” and “death” to America.
“When I watch Abdul, he’s full of s***,” Trump told a crowd at the Red Rock Casino Resort and Spa.
El-Sayed is not a communist, but rather a progressive who is campaigning on issues including Medicare for all and removing corporate money from politics.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Trump accused El-Sayed — who has been critical of the U.S. for supporting Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza — of being hateful and antisemitic.
“Put him in office, you’re going to find out what he loves,” Trump said. “He doesn’t love Israel. He doesn’t love Jewish people. He hates them. He hates them with a passion that burns in his heart.”
In a victory speech on Wednesday after his primary win over Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens, El-Sayed thanked Jewish supporters of his campaign and affirmed his commitment to representing people of all faiths.
open image in gallery“To all of my sisters and brothers of the Jewish faith, or any faith at all, or no faith at all, I want you to know that my commitment to your safety, my commitment to Jewish safety, is the same commitment that I have to the safety of my own daughters,” he said.
Outgoing Rep. Nancy Mace, in a separate CNN interview on Sunday, again painted El-Sayed as fueling a “communist” takeover and claimed Americans should be “very concerned” about elected leaders who follow “radical Islam ideology” and criticize the country.
“In the future, when our granddaughters are wearing burkas to school, we’re going to look back and say how did this happen?” Mace said, who claimed “America is not built on those values.”
Freedom of religion, speech and political association are enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution. The first president, George Washington, made a point of emphasizing the importance of religious tolerance, famously telling an early Jewish congregation that America “gives to bigotry no sanction.”
El-Sayed’s rival in the general election, Mike Rogers, has accused left-leaning Democrats like El-Sayed of leading a movement that’s “anti-American,” pointing to the progressive’s association with leftist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who has made comments he later disavowed that America “deserved 9/11.”
“I want to be held accountable for what I say and do, rather than this idea that … we’re so stuck in cancel culture that we all agreed was a bad idea back in 2020 but we seem to want to bring back,” El-Sayed told Meet the Press on Sunday.