The Howell rally claim

At the Howell stop, the vice-president painted a scenario of American cities set alight and placed El-Sayed's name beside that of commentator Hasan Piker among those who would direct and applaud the violence. "if those rioters were burning down New York, or Detroit, the Hasan Pikers and El-Sayeds would be right there leading them and cheering them on", Vance said. El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for US Senate in Michigan, would be the country's first Muslim senator if he wins next week's election.

Vance also reached across the Atlantic, linking the candidate's politics to leftwing protests in Paris that have produced thousands of arrests, which he described as "hordes of masked rioters, many from distant lands". Playing up the El-Sayed relationship with Piker, he said "that exact same cancer is what has corrupted Abdul El-Sayed".

A pattern of attacks

The riot accusation lands in the final stretch of the Michigan senate race, which has already brought repeated broadsides from the White House and its allies:

• •Donald Trump has branded El-Sayed a "jihadist".
• •Visiting Michigan on Sunday, Trump charged that El-Sayed was "on the side of the terrorists", told the state to "stand up and fight" against him, and has repeatedly used the candidate's middle name, Mohamed.
• •Vance earlier alleged El-Sayed was a representative of "terrible evil" who fights for "one group at the expense of others".

El-Sayed's response

To the "terrible evil" charge, El-Sayed replied that the real wrong was different: it was "evil", he said, to deprive people of healthcare and affordable groceries. At a weekend rally, he told supporters: "They think that by pointing at my name and my faith, that somehow you're going to ignore the fact" that voters cannot afford gas, groceries or a doctor.

Warnings from Democrats

Senator Chris Murphy, writing on X on Tuesday morning, urged attention to what he called a "cordinated [sic] campaign to delegitimatize Muslim Americans". Answering Robert F Kennedy Jr's suggestion that "five hundred million Arabs in the world" contribute nothing to science or literature, Murphy warned that "These increasingly hysterical attacks are a prelude to Republicans bringing us to a very, very dark place" once the election is over.

Researchers have suggested this midterm campaign has produced the most concentrated wave of Islamophobic rhetoric in US electoral politics since the aftermath of 9/11. The French demonstrations Vance invoked began as student protests against crumbling schools and the soaring cost of living, and Trump and allies recast them as evidence of the dangers of immigration.

Vance has made several visits to Michigan as Republican candidate Mike Rogers seeks to win the seat El-Sayed is vying for, with the election due next week.