Michigan Senate Democratic nominee Abdul el Sayed targeted Vice President JD Vance on Monday for calling him “very, very evil” at a Detroit rally. Vance made the statement during the Sterling Heights rally as he ripped into el Sayed for…
Page A8From§Eachthe coffee break edition — 1 September 2026
Vance calls rival 'very, very evil,' then wins over Republican Jews wary of him.
As it ran on the front
Let's do the euphemism autopsy on this one, because the language is doing a lot of the lifting. 'Very, very evil' — that's not a policy critique, that's a schoolyard verdict, delivered by a sitting Vice President about a named political rival. Words like that don't get walked back, they get repackaged. And on the same news cycle, the same guy who threw that grenade is being reported as 'winning over' a bloc of voters who were 'hesitant' about him. Hesitant. That's the polite version of 'we've read the transcripts and we're not thrilled.'
Here's the connection nobody's supposed to draw out loud: the outreach and the outburst aren't opposite moves, they're the same move aimed at two different audiences. You throw the bomb to the base that wants a villain named, and you send the charm offensive to the bloc you still need on the ledger come November. It's not a contradiction if you assume the goal was never consistency — the goal was coverage, in the insurance sense. You cover your flank with the outrage, you cover your gap with the outreach, and the guy doing both never has to reconcile them out loud because the news cycle moves before anyone puts the two stories on the same page.…
…(cont) I put them on the same page. That's the job.
And here's the part that isn't a bit: this is the Vice President of the United States. The office that's one medical emergency away from the desk with the football on it. When that office is calling a private citizen 'very, very evil' in one clip and shaking hands for votes in the next, you're not watching a communications strategy, you're watching the temperament of a man a heartbeat from the biggest chair in the building. You don't get to grade that on a curve because the second half of the sentence was more polite than the first half.
Watch both halves. That's all I'm asking. Watch both halves, every time, because the sentence with the polite half is the one they want you to remember, and the sentence with the ugly half is the one that tells you what's actually in the drawer.
“First he calls the guy 'very, very evil,' then he shows up needing votes from people who'd normally flinch at that kind of talk. That's not a contradiction, that's the whole play — throw the bomb, then sell the fire department. The stakes are the same guy is one heartbeat from the rest of the ticket.”
“Vice President Vance was simply speaking to a real concern about extremism, and separately his outreach reflects genuine shared values with the community — the 'very, very evil' comment, if you want to call it that, was about policy, not people. Was it about people? Let me get back to you on that.”
The receipts
Antisemitic incidents in 2025: 6,274 - the third-highest year since tracking began in 1979, with assaults at a record high ADL, 2025 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents
Vance wins over Republican Jews hesitant to support himVice President JD Vance delivered a speech behind closed doors at the annual Republican Jewish Coalition leadership summit on Monday in an attempt to win over pro-Israel Republicans who are hesitant to support him for a possible 2028…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.