Vice President JD Vance didn’t mince words during a speech in Michigan on Thursday in remarks critical of the latest Democratic socialist flavor of the month, Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, and his previous comments that appeared to offer empathy to a terrorist.
Vance focused heavily on the left-wing candidate’s response to a terrorist attack at a Jewish synagogue earlier this year while urging voters to elect Republican Mike Rogers.
Speaking in Monroe, Vance recalled meeting security guards from Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, where an armed attacker rammed a vehicle into the synagogue in March while roughly 140 people, many of them children, were inside.
Authorities said Ayman Mohamad Ghazali drove a truck containing gasoline and fireworks into the building before exchanging gunfire with security personnel, with investigators later concluding that Ghazali died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound and the FBI describing the assault as Hezbollah-inspired terrorism.
Vance credited the synagogue’s security personnel with preventing what he said could have become one of the deadliest terrorist attacks on American soil before turning his attention to El-Sayed’s response.
“This foreign-born jihadist, a literal terrorist, rammed his truck into a temple and opened fire, hoping to kill hundreds of innocent Jewish schoolchildren — our fellow Americans — inside,” Vance said. “Do you know what Abdul El-Sayed said when confronted with that?” Vance asked before quoting the Democrat’s statement that “hurt people hurt people.”
Vance accused El-Sayed of showing misplaced sympathy for the attacker rather than focusing exclusively on the Jewish families targeted in the assault, telling the crowd that political leaders should have “empathy for the victims of crime, not the people trying to commit them.”
.@JDVance RIPS Abdul El-Sayed for defending a terrorist:
“This foreign-born jihadist, a literal terrorist, rammed his truck into a temple and opened fire…and you know what Abdul El-Sayed said when confronted with that? He said…’Hurt people hurt people.’” https://t.co/NtPFUoy6Et
— Republicans (@Republicans) October 15, 2026
The broader context of El-Sayed’s remarks is more complicated, however, because he explicitly condemned Ghazali’s actions while also discussing what he described as a broader cycle of violence.
“I condemn what he did,” El-Sayed said the day after the attack, adding that there was “never a justification for attacking innocent people or houses of worship” and declaring that antisemitism had no place in American communities.
El-Sayed then noted that members of Ghazali’s family had reportedly been killed in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon and used the phrase “hurt people hurt people” while arguing that violence can produce additional violence. Uh-huh.
Those additional comments drew criticism from Jewish leaders and political opponents who argued that discussing Ghazali’s family circumstances immediately after the attack appeared to rationalize his actions, even though El-Sayed had explicitly condemned the violence.
El-Sayed later apologized while appearing before Michigan’s Jewish Democratic Caucus in August, saying he had attempted to provide broader context when the moment instead called for an unequivocal condemnation.
“I made a mistake,” El-Sayed said, explaining that while context could be discussed later, his initial response “just should have been the full stop.”
Vance seized on that apology Thursday, arguing that El-Sayed’s description of his earlier remarks as “the right medicine at the wrong time” still failed to adequately account for the seriousness of the attack.
“There is no excuse, there is no justification, and there is no place in the United States Senate for somebody who says otherwise,” Vance told supporters.
The vice president’s criticism extended well beyond the synagogue controversy as he portrayed the Michigan contest as a test of how far voters are willing to embrace the Democratic Party’s progressive wing.
Vance attacked El-Sayed over positions on immigration, policing and the Green New Deal while arguing that the Democratic nominee represents a political movement substantially to the left of previous generations of Democrats.
“The far left, the radicals of the Democratic Party, they’re on the ascent,” Vance said, arguing that the current party differs substantially from the Democratic Party associated with John F. Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt and Bill Clinton.
Vance also called El-Sayed a “little weasel” and said Michigan deserved a senator who appreciated the country and the state’s industrial heritage, drawing some of the sharpest rhetoric of the afternoon.
