STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. — Vice President JD Vance called Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee “evil” at a campaign rally here Monday, sharpening a personal fight in one of the country’s most closely watched races while steering clear of the trade war with Canada that Democrats believe is one of their best arguments in the state.

Over roughly 30 minutes, before an audience of about 200 Republicans, Vance alternated between promoting his anti-fraud work and attacking Abdul El-Sayed, casting him as a divisive, antisemitic figure who, if elected, could “destroy the United States of America.” 

“There’s something about Abdul El-Sayed that is very, very evil, and on the rise in the United States of America today,” Vance said. “It’s people who see themselves not as citizens of a combination — fighting for every single person, whether they’re Jewish or Christian, whether they’re white or Black or brown — but see themselves as fighting for one group at the expense of others.”

Vance braided together a crackdown on fraud in commercial trucking and his case against El-Sayed, tying both to foreignness — of drivers, of licenses, of El-Sayed himself.

“Today is about restoring the basic principle that if you want to drive a big truck on America’s roads, you ought to be able to speak English. You ought to be a legal resident of the United States of America,” Vance said. “Abdul El-Sayed said that we need to make sure that illegal aliens have driver’s licenses in this country. He would love to undercut the wages of American truckers.”

Vance’s focus underscored a choice: In a state where President Donald Trump’s tariffs and trade war with neighboring Canada are projected to cost the average household an additional $5,600 a year, Republicans are running on El-Sayed rather than on the economy.

Vance hammered El-Sayed in particular for comments he made in the aftermath of an attack earlier this year on Temple Israel, a synagogue in West Bloomfield. El-Sayed condemned the attack at the time but also said “hurt people hurt people,” a comment critics read as an effort to excuse the attacker. El-Sayed apologized for the remark this weekend at the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus’ Summer Simcha event, where he was warmly received. Vance seized on it anyway as he stumped for Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee.

“You’ve got to ask yourself if he’s willing to empathize not with the children who almost had their lives destroyed at the most innocent, and what should be the safest place in the world, their school, what is he going to do when he goes to Washington, D.C., when the cameras aren’t on?” Vance said.

Vance also pressed El-Sayed’s ties to Hasan Piker, a left-wing streamer, even as the Democrat has spent recent days distancing himself from him.

“When I see Abdul El-Sayed campaigning around this state with somebody who said that America deserved 9/11, what I see is a man who has sympathy and compassion for people who share his religion, but has nothing for people who don’t,” Vance said.

The attacks come as Rogers has worked in recent weeks to broaden his coalition to include disaffected Democrats, particularly Jewish voters skeptical of El-Sayed. On Saturday, Rogers touted a letter from Jewish Democrats and independents who said they plan to back him and accused El-Sayed of “demonizing” Jewish people.

On Monday, Rogers sought to further expand his coalition to include Michigan’s Indian American community, seizing on an online post by El-Sayed that questioned whether Vance’s late Appalachian grandfather would have embraced second lady Usha Vance.

“He can’t condemn his running mate Hasan Piker because they’re in total lockstep, and now he’s degraded the second lady of the United States of America,” Rogers said. “To the Indian American community across Michigan, I’m sorry that we have a candidate running for the Senate who doesn’t have the decency to treat you with the respect you deserve.”

Vance appeared to take the post personally.

“I would never come to this state and disrespect you or disrespect somebody’s family by talking about another person’s wife — a person who isn’t on the ballot,” Vance said. “I actually think that the people of Michigan think it’s kind of weird when you talk about another guy’s wife. I think the people of Michigan would like you to talk about the public policy ideas you have to make their [lives] better.”

His remarks came hours after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy appeared in Detroit with eight U.S. attorneys to announce the trucking crackdown. The Department of Transportation will shut down 110 commercial driver’s license schools tied to more than 5,000 drivers the agency said failed English proficiency tests, and the Department of Homeland Security will carry out what officials called a “synchronized single-day sweep” of 200 schools across 23 states.

The fraud material gives Vance a platform on two issues that have galvanized Republican voters, immigration and fraud, and on a portfolio he has sought to own. Vance chairs the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, which Trump created in March after the collapse of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Vance never mentioned the tariffs. Canada is Michigan’s largest export market, taking in $21.2 billion in goods last year — 36% of the state’s total exports, according to the U.S. Trade Representative’s office.

Michigan Democrats see that as their opening. With nine weeks until the midterm elections, they argue the unpopularity of Trump’s economic agenda could deliver the margin they need.

At a news conference Monday afternoon, El-Sayed framed Vance’s visit as a diversion.

“They want to make this race about everything that is not what Michiganders are facing every day,” El-Sayed said. “They don’t want to talk about the price of groceries. They don’t want to talk about the challenges of housing. They don’t want to talk about healthcare. They don’t want to talk about jobs, because they know their public policy is destroying all of that for us.”

Inside the Sterling Heights event, the first battleground rally organized by MAGA Inc., Trump’s super PAC, which has more than $400 million in its account, attendees interviewed by MS NOW remained broadly supportive of the president’s agenda. Several also said, unprompted, that the party’s chances in Michigan depend on the economy — the subject Vance had just spent half an hour avoiding.

Asked what Republicans should emphasize to win statewide, Ida Telesco, a retired teacher, had a simple answer: “fixing the economy.”

“I mean, we’re in Michigan, the automotive industry; making things work with Canada. There’s so many different things going on — making it affordable,” Telesco said.

David Sonnenschein, who supports Rogers, said the party would benefit from less “chaos” in its relationship with Canada.

“I’ll tell you that ‘Lake America’ is offensive,” Sonnenschein said, referencing Trump’s renaming of Lake Ontario. “You can have a trade negotiation without being offensive and a bully. I don’t know enough about the numbers to say if there’s anything positive about it, but I think it’s chaotic, and right now it’s important that we win elections.”

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From MS Now.