Second lady Usha Vance has responded to what critics have called a “racist” dig from Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
The drama started last week when, while speaking at a steel plant in Ohio, Vice President JD Vance aimed fire at El-Sayed over his past remarks linking criticism of Sharia law to so-called white supremacy.
“He once argued, not too long ago, that criticisms of Sharia law were rooted in white supremacy,” Vance said. “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. That’s not my grandpa’s Democratic Party, my friend.”
Listen:
Vance on El-Sayed: I would 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 are a white supremacist. pic.twitter.com/t7RqCCJt5Y
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 21, 2026
According to the New York Post, “Vance’s grandparents died years before he met Usha in 2010 when they were both students at Yale Law School. The vice president credited James Vance, his papaw, with being a stabilizing and influential figure in his life while growing up.”
El-Sayed fired back with a disturbing tweet posted Saturday in which he suggested that Vance’s grandparents wouldn’t have been accepting of Usha on account of her Indian ancestry.
“So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no…” the Michigan Democrat tweeted.
The tweet prompted massive backlash, with critics accusing El-Sayed of being a “racist creep,” among other things. He later doubled down in an MS-NOW interview late Saturday, according to Fox News.
“The confusing thing about it is that he thinks that there are some people who are more American than others because they can point to their papaw who was here earlier,” he said. “And my question to him is simply: Why is it then, how do you look your parents-in-law in the eye and say that somehow they’re less American than you are? Because that’s what he’s implying there.”
Usha, meanwhile, was asked about El-Sayed’s tweet during a “Fox & Friends” interview on Fox News days later.
“I mean, I have to admit, I kind of laughed because yes, I never met JD’s mama and papa, but I do know and love the children that they raised — you know, his mom, his aunt, and uncle — and they have never been anything but incredibly loving,” Usha said in an interview slated to air in full Wednesday.
Listen to a preview clip from the interview below:
Usha Vance responds to Abdul El-Sayed’s dig about whether JD Vance would take her “back in time to meet Papaw.”
The second lady says she laughed off the far-left candidates comment about their personal lives, saying she’s always felt at home with her husband’s Ohio family.… pic.twitter.com/cRkinyUKgg
— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 25, 2026
“I mean, his aunt is like a second mother to me,” Usha continued. “And so I have to think that if they raised children like that, they would have been loving as well. And I would have really, really, really loved to have met them.”
She also spoke about her first time visiting Ohio.
“I had never been to Ohio before meeting JD,” she revealed. “I had no idea what to expect. He makes fun of me because I thought it would look more like Iowa, which obviously it does not. And whatever expectations I might’ve had were blown up when I got there.”
“I mean, it’s a culturally diverse place in many ways. It has all sorts of traditions that were new to me in other ways, but the people are so welcoming. Everyone has been really loving. They are my family. They treat me like their family,” she concluded.
In his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” the vice president reportedly wrote that one of his “great regrets” in life was that his grandparents died before they could meet his wife.
