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 show “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.
“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.”
“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, and nobody in the family attaches any importance to what El-Sayed says.
She turned warmer on Second Lady Usha Vance, 40, in a segment released five days later. “She’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met,” Aikins told Lahren. “She’s very humble.” She added: “She’s very genuine, very authentic. She loves JD. She’s a good mom,” and, “I can’t think of anything bad to say about her.” The topic had come up after Lahren raised the online attention in late June to an $8.75 Old Navy maternity dress the second lady wore in a Father’s Day post, while pregnant with the couple’s fourth child, who was born July 20.
What El-Sayed Has Said About the Family
Months of sharp commentary from El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee in Michigan’s 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.”
The dispute traces to an August 21 speech in Middletown, Ohio, in which Vance said he would have trouble explaining today’s Democratic Party to his late grandfather, whom he called Papaw. El-Sayed answered the next day, on August 22, with a post on X: “So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no…” That message pulled the Vance family deeper into the campaign brawl.
Vance Answers, Twice
The vice president responded head-on on Monday, August 31, at a rally in Sterling Heights, Mich., outside Detroit, telling the crowd, “Keep my wife’s name the hell out of your mouth, because she’s way out of your league.” He went further from the same stage: “There’s something about Abdul El-Sayed that is very, very evil and on the rise in the United States of America today.” What he opposed, he said, were people who see themselves “not as citizens of a common nation, fighting for every single person” but “as fighting for one group at the expense of others.”
He returned to it on September 10, from the stage of the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, and took the Papaw post apart directly. “Abdul looks at him, sees the color of his skin, and decides that he could never have loved my wife,” he told delegates. Earlier that night, as Sen. Ted Cruz named El-Sayed alongside two other Democrats, someone in the hall shouted, “He should be shot!” El-Sayed answered on CNN hours later: “I’m a dad with two daughters, and I hope those daughters get to grow up and live with their dad.”
El-Sayed Points to a Trump Post
El-Sayed used a CNN appearance the night of the Sterling Heights rally 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. On August 8, 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 America’s.” Trump, he said, was “trying to highlight the fact that my wife wears a hijab, as if to make an argument that that’s somehow less American.”
Plenty of the Lahren interview had nothing to do with the feud. Aikins 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 released further cuts since, on her “Hillbilly Elegy” pay and on the vice president’s “childless cat ladies” exchange with Taylor Swift.
A Race That Has Turned
The polling has moved while the family argument has run. A Detroit News survey by the Glengariff Group, published September 8 but taken August 31 through September 3, put Republican Mike Rogers at 45.8 percent and El-Sayed at 44.4. Two later polls reversed the order — CNN and SSRS had El-Sayed up 47 to 44 on September 9, Trafalgar 46 to 45 the next day — and the averages now give him a lead of about two points in a race still rated a toss-up. The two men debate on October 8 in Grand Rapids and October 21 in the Detroit market before meeting on the ballot November 3.
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.