If Beverly Vance Aikins ever runs into Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat running for Senate in Michigan, the encounter will not end politely. The mother of Vice President JD Vance told listeners of the OutKick podcast “Tomi Lahren Is Fearless,” in its September 2, 2026, episode, that she would probably take a swing at him — though she said in the same breath that she has no intention of doing anything of the kind.
The remark capped a long stretch of the interview in which she defended her son’s household. Tomi Lahren, 34, who also co-hosts Fox News’ “The Big Weekend Show,” had opened the subject by noting a pattern: the Vance family keeps turning up in the commentary of El-Sayed, 41, who talks about the vice president, his wife and their children.
“I think that man’s an idiot,” Aikins said. Of the couple’s four children, she said: “Those are my babies. I love those babies and would do anything for any of them.” She turned next to Second Lady Usha Vance, 40. “I love Usha as if she were my own daughter. She’s one of the best, most genuine people I’ve ever met. And she loves my son, and she’s a good mother,” she said.
An OutKick write-up of her remarks to Lahren carried more of that praise for her daughter-in-law. “She’s very humble,” Aikins said, describing the second lady as “One of the nicest people I’ve ever met.” The topic had surfaced after Lahren brought up the recent online attention surrounding an inexpensive Old Navy maternity dress the second lady wore.
“I’d probably punch the guy if I’d ever seen him, and then that would get me in trouble,” Aikins said. Part of what stings, she said, is that El-Sayed has no idea what her son is really like: “It makes me mad, honestly.” Even so, she told Lahren, “I’m not gonna do anything about it.”
Asked why opponents target relatives, Aikins answered in one word: jealousy. Her son, 42, holds the vice presidency and has a wife and four children, she noted. The jabs, by her account, miss entirely, because no one in the family attaches any importance to what El-Sayed says.
What El-Sayed Has Said About the Family
Months of sharp commentary from El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee in Michigan’s 2026 midterm Senate race, preceded the back-and-forth. On the podcast “The Allen Analysis Show” in April, he said Vance “has brown kids who he thinks are less American than everyone else,” adding: “Like, that’s wild to look at your own kids and be like you don’t actually belong as much in this country that I brought you into.” He went on: “Bro, it must break you every time you hug your own kids.” Another account of that same April episode renders the remark differently, quoting El-Sayed as saying: “Can you imagine, he’s got brown kids, at some point he’s going to have a really awkward conversation with his kids, like, you made your career hating people who are different.”
The dispute is reported to have started after Vance, in a speech, described going back in time to visit his “Papaw.” The Democratic Party in 2026, he told the crowd, was what he would describe to his grandfather. The vice president’s family history came up next: El-Sayed raised it on August 21 in a social media post: “So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no.” The message pulled the Vance family even deeper into the campaign brawl.
Vance Answers at a Detroit Rally
The vice president responded head-on Monday, August 31, at a rally in Sterling Heights, Mich., outside Detroit, telling the crowd, “Keep my wife’s name the hell outta your mouth, because she’s way outta your league!”
He went further from the same stage. “There is something about Abdul El-Sayed that is very, very evil and on the rise in the United States of America today,” he said. What he opposed, he said, were “people who see themselves, not as citizens of a common nation 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.” According to rally accounts, he also characterized El-Sayed as a man whose sympathy is reserved for “people who share his religion, but have nothing for people who don’t.”
A national argument over religion, identity and how far campaigns should go in talking about candidates’ spouses and children swallowed the Michigan contest after those remarks.
El-Sayed Points to a Trump Post
CNN gave El-Sayed his opening that night, and he used the appearance to push back and accuse the vice president of hypocrisy. Spouses were a subject he would rather leave alone, he said, before pointing to President Donald Trump, who he said had made his wife a target first. In August, Trump posted paired pictures on Truth Social setting himself and the first lady beside El-Sayed and his wife, Dr. Sarah Jukaku, who wears a hijab, under a caption reading “Two very different Americas.” “Donald Trump, almost as soon as I was nominated, tweeted a picture of me and my wife relative to him and his wife, trying to highlight the fact that my wife wears a hijab, as if to make an argument that that’s somehow less American,” El-Sayed said.
Neither side has shown much appetite for de-escalation. Vance pressed his case from the stage outside Detroit. CNN heard El-Sayed’s hypocrisy argument. And the vice president’s mother put in her own word, speaking from a friendly podcast chair rather than a debate stage.
Plenty of the conversation had nothing to do with the feud. The Fox News episode page is headlined “JD Vance’s Mom FIRES Back At Family Bully Abdul El-Sayed | Tomi Lahren is Fearless,” and its description says Aikins “fires back at politician Abdul El-Sayed following his controversial attacks targeting her daughter-in-law Usha and her grandchildren” and “sets the record straight on family, faith, and why she won’t let political critics mess with the people she loves.” The same page shows Aikins also discussed her battle with opiate addiction, reclaiming her nursing license and Amy Adams’ portrayal of her in “Hillbilly Elegy.” Asked about Indian food, she said she enjoys it but doubted she could make it: “I have to admit, I don’t think I could cook it,” she said, adding, “But it’s pretty good.”
OutKick has kept rolling out pieces of the sit-down. A September 5 segment covered her “Hillbilly Elegy” pay and a possible sequel, and a September 6 segment covered her reaction to the vice president’s “childless cat ladies” exchange with Taylor Swift. Another cut from the Lahren interview, published Sunday, September 6, under the headline “Beverly Vance calls daughter-in-law Usha humble: ‘One of the nicest people I’ve ever met’,” focused on the second lady, with Aikins calling her “very genuine, very authentic,” saying she loves her husband and is “a good mom,” and adding, “I can’t think of anything bad to say about her.”
Policy barely enters into it for Aikins; the people in the family photos do. Her grandchildren and her daughter-in-law shaped how she voiced her frustration, and she insisted the criticism will not shake them — with the caveat that a face-to-face meeting might test her restraint.