Usha Vance reacts to senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed's 'racist' remark about her and VP

Second lady Usha Vance.

Second lady Usha Vance responded to explosive remarks made last week by Abdul El-Sayed, which suggested that Vice President JD Vance's grandfather would not have accepted his grandson marrying a woman of Indian descent, a remark some criticized as "racist," saying she was able to laugh it off.

El-Sayed is the Democrat candidate for U.S. senate in Michigan running against Republican Mike Rogers, and his remarks came in response to criticism from JD Vance during a speaking event in Michigan. 

"He once argued, not too long ago, that criticisms of Sharia law were rooted in white supremacy," the vice president 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 Papaw’s Democratic party, my friends," Vance said last week.

"So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no ..." El-Sayed wrote in a post on X in response.

"I have to admit, I kind of laughed," the second lady said during an interview with Fox & Friends that aired Wednesday morning. "I never met JD's Mamaw and Papaw," she continued, referencing the vice president's late maternal grandmother and grandfather, James and Bonnie Vance, who played a significant role in raising the future vice president. James died in 1997 and Bonnie died in 2005, years before Usha and JD met while at Yale Law School. 

"But, I do know and love the children that they raised -- his mom, his aunt and uncle. And they have never been anything but incredibly loving. His aunt is like a second mother to me. So, I have to think that if they raised children like that, they would've been loving as well. And I would've really, really loved to have met them."

Over the weekend, El-Sayed was given a chance to clarify or walk back his remark during an interview on MS Now. He doubled down on it. 

"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."

Watch a portion of Usha Vance's response to El-Sayed's remark in the video below.