BS BULLETIN:
- Usha Vance has responded to Abdul El-Sayed’s controversial “Papaw” swipe involving her Indian heritage.
- Rather than return fire, she said JD Vance’s Ohio family has been “incredibly loving” toward her.
- El-Sayed has since tried to explain his remark as an argument about who gets considered “American.”
Abdul El-Sayed took a cheap shot at Usha Vance.
Usha Vance responded by talking about how much she loves her family.
The second lady has finally responded to the Michigan Democratic Senate nominee’s eyebrow-raising attack, which came after Vice President JD Vance invoked his late grandfather while criticizing El-Sayed’s past remarks about Sharia law. “I have to admit, I kind of laughed,” Usha told Fox & Friends in an interview airing Wednesday.
The controversy began when JD Vance went after El-Sayed during a speech at an Ohio steel plant last Friday.
Vance recalled that his “Papaw,” James Vance, spent decades as a welder and was an old-school Democrat because he believed the party represented working people. Vance contrasted that Democratic Party with El-Sayed, who previously argued that efforts to ban Sharia law could not be understood without examining white supremacy.
“I’d love to go back in time and tell my Papaw that there is a man who claims to stand for working people who says not only should we have Sharia law, but if you criticize it, you’re a White supremacist,” Vance said. “That’s not my Papaw’s Democratic Party, my friends.”
El-Sayed decided Usha belonged in the argument. “So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no…” he posted.
Critics immediately interpreted that as a suggestion that Vance’s white, working-class grandparents would not have accepted his Indian-American wife. El-Sayed was hammered online, with journalist Emily Schrader calling him a “racist creep” and Rep. Brandon Gill asking why El-Sayed apparently assumed white Midwestern grandparents would be racist.
Now Usha has answered the question herself. Yes, she acknowledged, she never met JD’s Mamaw and Papaw. But she knows the children they raised. “His mom, his aunt and uncle, and they have never been anything but incredibly loving,” Usha said. She described JD’s aunt as being “like a second mother to me” and said she believes the grandparents who raised that family would have been loving toward her as well.
Then came perhaps the simplest answer to the entire controversy: “They are my family. They treat me like their family.”
Ouch.
No accusation. No Twitter flamethrower. No lecture about racism. Just: They’re my family.
Usha even joked about her own misconceptions before she first visited Ohio. She said JD still teases her because she somehow expected the state to look like Iowa. Instead, she found a culturally diverse place filled with welcoming people. “Whatever expectations I might have had were blown up when I got there,” she said.
El-Sayed, meanwhile, has attempted to explain what he meant. He told MS NOW that his point was really about JD Vance supposedly believing that some Americans are more American than others because their families have been here longer. “How do you look your parents-in-law in the eye and say that somehow they’re less American than you are?” El-Sayed said. “Because that’s what he’s implying there.”
There is one rather obvious problem with that explanation.
Vance wasn’t talking about how long anybody’s ancestors had been in America. He was talking about the political beliefs of his own grandfather — specifically contrasting the working-class Democratic Party his Papaw supported with the modern progressive politics represented by El-Sayed.
El-Sayed was the guy who brought Usha’s ethnicity into it.
And this wasn’t his only personal shot at a woman connected to the Trump administration that weekend.
El-Sayed also went after Trump aide Natalie Harp, writing, “Natalie, I think he’s had a little too much iPad for the week. He needs his rest,” amid left-wing speculation about Harp’s relationship with Trump. That combination prompted even some Democrats opposed to El-Sayed to accuse him of sexism and misogyny.
El-Sayed is now the Democratic nominee in one of the country’s most consequential Senate races, facing Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan.
Which means voters will probably be hearing quite a bit more about all of this.
DBS WIRE SOURCES:
- New York Post — Usha Vance has perfect response to Abdul El-Sayed’s ‘racist’ attack on her and JD
- Fox News — Usha Vance fires back at pointed jab from Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed
- Washington Examiner — Usha Vance says husband’s family always embraced her after El-Sayed’s ‘Papaw’ swipe
- Fox News — El-Sayed under fire after taking aim at Usha Vance and female Trump aide
- New York Post — JD Vance unloads on Abdul El-Sayed over Sharia remarks
