Vice President JD Vance's mother called Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed "an idiot" after months of racially charged attacks on the Vance family, and the vice president himself told El-Sayed to keep his wife's name out of his mouth.
Beverly Vance Adkins sat down with Tomi Lahren on OutKick's Tomi Lahren is Fearless on Wednesday and did not hold back about the Democrat who has spent months targeting her son's interracial marriage and mixed-race grandchildren. El-Sayed, an Egyptian-American Muslim running for a Michigan Senate seat, has repeatedly gone after JD Vance's wife Usha, who is of Indian heritage, with comments that would end a Republican's career overnight.
Vance Adkins was blunt about what she thinks of El-Sayed's campaign of personal attacks. As Breitbart reported, she told Lahren she had a simple assessment of the man going after her family.
"I think that man's an idiot."
She did not stop there. Vance Adkins defended her daughter-in-law and grandchildren with the directness of a mother who has had enough.
"Those are my babies. I love those babies and would do anything for any of them. And I love Usha as if she were my own daughter. She's one of the best, most genuine people I've ever met. And she loves my son, and she's a good mother. And I don't pay attention to people like [El-Sayed]."
The attacks from El-Sayed that drew the Vance family's public response have been building for months. In one instance, the Michigan Senate nominee posed a rhetorical question: "So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no?" The remark insinuated that Vance's late grandfather would have rejected Usha Vance because of her Indian heritage, a claim built entirely on El-Sayed's assumption about a dead man he never met.
El-Sayed also said Vance looks at his own mixed-race children as something "less American." He urged Usha Vance to "dump her husband" and, according to descriptions of his public comments, compared the vice president's charisma to "a doorknob" and his aura to "a toad."
The Vance family has spoken openly about their interfaith marriage and the personal journey that brought them together. For El-Sayed to weaponize that openness, to tell a man's wife to leave him, to suggest his grandfather would be a bigot, to call his children less than fully American, is the kind of racial provocation that would dominate cable news for weeks if a Republican said it about a Democrat's family.
Vance Adkins offered her own theory about what drives El-Sayed's fixation on her son.
"I think they're jealous, honestly. I mean, JD is 42 years old. He's handsome. He's the vice president of the United States. He's got a beautiful wife, four beautiful children, and jealousy is the only thing I can think of. Yeah. So, I mean, he can take all the shots he wants. It's going to go, you know, it's going to get no merit from any of us."
She also admitted the attacks get under her skin, even if she tries not to let them.
"I mean, it makes me mad, honestly, because he doesn't know JD and he doesn't know, you know, what type of person he is, and I do, but in the long run, I'm not going to do anything about it. I mean, you know, I'd probably punch the guy if I ever seen him, and then that would get me in trouble. So, I'll just go with the flow."
Earlier in the week, Vice President Vance issued his own response to El-Sayed, and it carried the weight of a man who had clearly reached the end of his patience. The vice president did not just defend his wife. He went after El-Sayed's record.
"My message to Abdul El-Sayed is: You can pal around with terrorist sympathizers, and you can say that America deserves 9/11, or you can empathize not with the children who were targeted at Temple Israel, but with the attacker. These are all despicable things, but they're all things that the people of Michigan will judge you on based on your record. But whatever you want to talk about, Abdul, keep my wife's name the h*** out of your mouth, because she's way out of your league."
Vance's statement referenced El-Sayed's alleged associations with terrorist sympathizers and claims about 9/11, as well as what Vance described as El-Sayed's empathy with an attacker who targeted children at Temple Israel rather than with the victims. The specific incidents behind those references were not detailed further, but Vance framed them as matters of public record that Michigan voters would weigh.
The vice president and his family have faced hostility beyond political disagreement. An Ohio man pleaded guilty to federal charges for vandalizing Vance's Cincinnati home, a reminder that the personal attacks on the Vance family have sometimes moved beyond words.
Consider what El-Sayed has done. A Democratic Senate nominee has spent months attacking a sitting vice president's interracial marriage, told his wife to leave him, suggested his dead grandfather would be a racist, and said the vice president views his own children as "less American." He has done all of this while running as a candidate in Michigan, a state where Democrats routinely lecture voters about racial tolerance and inclusion.
If a Republican Senate candidate had told a Democratic vice president's spouse, of any race or heritage, to "dump" her husband, questioned whether a deceased family member would accept her, and called the couple's children less than fully American, every major newsroom in the country would treat it as a disqualifying scandal. Editorial boards would demand the candidate withdraw. Cable panels would run wall-to-wall coverage.
El-Sayed has faced no such reckoning. The Vance family, including a mother who has been open about deeply personal family matters, has been left to defend itself publicly while the political class that claims to oppose racism stays quiet.
Usha Vance, by every account from the family, is a devoted wife and mother whom Beverly Vance Adkins loves "as if she were my own daughter." The couple has navigated the ordinary and extraordinary pressures of family life in the public eye. El-Sayed's decision to make their marriage and their children into political targets says far more about his character than it does about theirs.
Beverly Vance Adkins said she would not let El-Sayed's attacks gain any merit from the family. The vice president told El-Sayed that Michigan voters would judge him on his own record. Both responses carried the same message: a family that built something real is not going to be torn apart by a politician who builds nothing but resentment.
When a man's mother, his wife, and his children are fair game for racial smears and nobody in his opponent's party says a word, the silence tells you everything about whose commitment to tolerance is real, and whose is just a slogan.