Dr. Abdul El-Sayed Responds to JD Vance: “We Believe in an America Big Enough for All of Us.”
MICHIGAN – This evening, at a rally in Marquette, MI with over 1,300 Yoopers in attendance, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed addressed J.D. Vance’s remarks in Michigan. Read an excerpt from Abdul’s speech below. Access the full speech here.
J.D. Vance was just in Michigan. He had a cute little rally in Monroe…
Now, at [J.D.’s] little rally, he wanted to raise questions about my commitment to America. And let me tell you, nobody understands how deep and profound the gift of this country is like a kid who was born here but for the accident of history that allowed that to happen. I got a front-row seat to what my life might have been had I not been born in America.
So don’t lecture me about America. I know America. And I know that in America…
In America, we’re big enough to guarantee healthcare to our people rather than taking it away.
In America, we’re big enough to invest in unions rather than busting them.
In America, we don’t tell people what to believe. We value their beliefs.
In America, we don’t question the outcomes of democratic elections.
In America, we believe in the right to choose.
In America, we don’t discriminate against people for who they love, how they identify, how they pray, or the color of their skin.
We believe in an America big enough for all of us.
So don’t you dare come from Ohio to lecture me about America. You don’t know a damn thing about America. Never have, never will.
You know, they’ve been saying all kinds of things, trying to point to my name and my faith, “Oh he can’t win an election. His name’s Abdul. He’s a Muslim.”
Yeah, I’m a Muslim. But I also understand that my allegiance is to a constitution, and that constitution guarantees us all the right to pray how we choose to pray, or not pray at all.
It’s a document they don’t understand very well.
Because here’s the thing about it: They want you to fear my name. They want you to fear my faith.
But I know that there is a lot of fear right now. And that is the fear that people hold deep in their hearts when they think about just how hard it is to survive the next month.
There’s the fear when you have to pull up to that gas station of asking, “Is the gas that I need to get me to the grocery store going to cost me half of what I could buy at the grocery store itself?”
There’s the fear of looking your kids in the eye and wondering whether or not you’re going to have to skimp on their meals tomorrow.
There’s the fear of the school you send your kids to that looks like it did 50 years ago.
There’s the fear of wondering what happens when you get sick and you realize that you have to go and see a doctor, and that the worst day isn’t the day you got sick. It’s the day you got the bill because you went to go see a doctor.
And that fear, that fear, that anxiety that gnaws at people, that is a fear and an anxiety inflicted on all of us by the people in power right now.
My name and my faith are not nearly as scary as the fact that we are fighting a war we don’t need to fight that’s raising our gas prices and our grocery prices.
My name and my faith aren’t nearly as scary as the idea of not knowing how you’re going to pay for your medical care.
My name and my faith aren’t nearly as scary as looking your kids in the eye and wondering whether or not there’s going to be a job for them in the future.
My name and my faith are not nearly as scary as the idea of the broken promises that they made, that they continue to break every single day.
And I want to finish here because I’m 19 days away, God willing, from the end of a campaign that’s had us travel this glorious, beautiful state.
And you know, when I kicked off this race, people said, “Well, how are you gonna win? You know, your name is kind of rough.”
I was like, “Is it? It means servant leader. I think it’s a pretty good name in politics.”
And I said, you know, maybe you’re right. But I’m not taking a bet on my name. I’m taking a bet on my state.
Because I’ve been a guy named Abdul my whole life. I know some things about being a guy named Abdul.
And when you’ve got a name like mine, you see the best of us, and too often, sometimes you see the worst of us.
And there are always a few very loud people who are small and want to make us small like them.
They’re carnival barkers. You hear them. Too many of them are from Ohio.
Go Blue!
You know, it’s funny…J.D. Vance called me a little weasel today.
I’m like, no, no, no. What you’re talking about is a fucking Wolverine.
You can take your Buckeye and go shove it somewhere else…Ohio.
Here, we might be Wildcats, we might be Spartans, we might be Wolverines, but we will never be Buckeyes.
But here’s the thing about it: We know who we are in Michigan. We know.
And I’ve just had this incredible gift of being able to spend time with folks in their communities.
And folks have invited me into their living rooms and their churches and their synagogues and their temples, and invited me to their basements and their backyards, to their cookouts, to their union halls, their VFW halls.
And the thing about Michiganders is we’re like this rare mix: open-minded.
We are.
People don’t see my name and get scared as much as they’re trying to scare you. They see it as an invitation for a conversation.
“I might never have met somebody like you, but I want to know what you’re about and who you are.”
And that comes out of a kind of earnestness that we have.
Michiganders are earnest. We give the best and we expect the best. We believe in people. We believe in each other, and we believe in people’s good faith.
And we couple that earnestness with a kind of grit.
We’re willing to work hard. We’re willing to endure. You cannot live here in the winter and not endure.
And that earnestness and that grit, that open mind, all of it underlaid by a kind of big-heartedness.
Michiganders are good people.
And those small-minded people—the J.D. Vances of the world, the Donald Trumps of the world, the Mike Rogers of the world—they want to make us smaller than we really are.
And the bet I’ve taken is on how big we are.
###