Fresh off his victory in the Democratic primary race for US Senate in Michigan, progressive epidemiologist Abdul El-Sayed used television appearances on Sunday to respond to increasingly hysterical attacks by Republicans and President Donald Trump while offering a positive vision for the future, underscoring his support for Medicare for All and a humane foreign policy that doesn’t fund genocide.
“It’s not radical to believe that people should be able to afford their groceries,” El-Sayed, who is set to face Republican Mike Rogers in November, told NBC’s Kristen Welker in response to the Senate GOP’s first attack ad of the general election. “It’s not radical to believe that you should have healthcare in this country. It’s not radical to believe that you don’t think the president should be able to deny elections or make $2.2 billion off of his role in office. It’s not radical to believe that all of us should be able to breathe clean air and drink clean water. Those are the things that I’ve been fighting for.”
Trump and congressional Republicans wasted no time launching unhinged and bigoted attacks on El-Sayed following his primary victory last week. In a Truth Social post on Saturday, Trump posted an image showing a photo of himself and First Lady Melania Trump alongside a photo of El-Sayed and his wife, psychiatrist Sarah Jukaku. The caption of the photo blared, “Two VERY DIFFERENT America’s [sic].”
Asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper to respond to the post, El-Sayed said Sunday that the caption is “right.”
“One [America] in which your overlords are two people who don’t like each other, but joint in the interest of making billions of dollars off of you, or two people who genuinely love each other, enjoyed some pancakes together, want to come together to build the kind of America where they can raise a family and know that that family is going to have the good things,” said the Michigan Democrat.
“So, yes, you got two different visions of America. Donald Trump’s vision is the one you’re living in right now,” he continued. “Can you afford your gas? Can you afford your groceries? Do you believe, when you look your kids in the eye, that they’re going to have a better future than you did?”
Democratic Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed responds to President Trump posting a picture of his wife. pic.twitter.com/j8lGGwPET8
— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) August 9, 2026
El-Sayed overcame more than $30 million in spending by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—and over $60 million in total outside spending—to defeat Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) in last week’s primary contest. Throughout his primary campaign, El-Sayed criticized AIPAC as a destructive force in US politics and spoke out in support of ending American military aid to Israel—a stance that Trump and Republicans have sought to equate to antisemitism.
“He doesn’t love Israel. He doesn’t love Jewish people,” Trump said of El-Sayed last week. “He hates them. He hates them with a passion that burns in his heart.”
During his CNN appearance on Sunday, El-Sayed hit back at the president’s smear, saying, “I love and revere Judaism and the Jewish people.”
“They are not the same as AIPAC in Israel,” he said. “I want our tax dollars spent to provide good schools, to pay for healthcare, to rebuild our roads here in Michigan, rather than it being sent abroad to subsidize foreign militaries. That’s not just Israel, by the way. That is also Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Jordan and Pakistan.”
“So I believe in international law,” El-Sayed continued. “I believe in equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination for all people. I believe in a process that allows a free Palestinian people and free Jewish Israeli people to come together around what they believe the ultimate peace should look like.”
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