Abdul El-Sayed just won one of the biggest Democratic primary upsets of the year. That got him Trump’s attention, and a rather unusual question from Sky News.
Trump had attacked El-Sayed during an appearance in Las Vegas. Sky’s James Matthews asked El-Sayed about it directly: “If you pardon the language, he says you’re full of… What do you say to that?”
El-Sayed barely paused. “At least I don’t let mine go in the middle of the Oval Office,” he said, and walked off.
Brutally short, and a reference to an unsubstantiated online rumour about Trump, there’s no reliable evidence the alleged incident behind the joke actually happened. That qualification did nothing to slow the clip down once it hit social media, spreading fast among Democrats delighted to see a candidate answer Trump in exactly the language Trump uses on everyone else.
Trump started this
The remark came after El-Sayed beat Michigan congresswoman Haley Stevens to win the Democratic Senate nomination. Trump’s since called him a “communist loser” and claimed he “hates Jews and Israel,” despite El-Sayed having repeatedly condemned antisemitism. Trump also posted an image comparing his own marriage to El-Sayed’s, emphasising his full name, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, widely read as an attempt to draw attention to his Muslim identity.
According to the Daily Beast, the “full of shit” line specifically came during an attack on El-Sayed’s support for abolishing the Senate filibuster. His response made clear he’s not planning to spend this campaign quietly absorbing insults from the White House.
A result that rattled Democrats too
El-Sayed, a 41-year-old doctor and former public health official, narrowly beat Stevens after a bitter, extraordinarily expensive primary. The AP reported he led by 14,893 votes when the race was called, under a point from more than 1.5 million ballots. He overcame more than $60m in outside spending and an opponent backed by Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, and retiring senator Gary Peters.
He ran on Medicare for All, campaign finance reform, and ending US military aid to Israel, backed by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, while groups tied to AIPAC spent heavily either for Stevens or against him. Sanders called it one of the most extraordinary victories in modern American politics.
El-Sayed had previously lost Michigan’s 2018 Democratic gubernatorial primary to Whitmer by over 20 points, then spent years building a public profile through broadcasting, podcasts and online commentary before launching this Senate run in April 2025. That media background showed in how he handled Matthews’ question, no lengthy defence, no pivot to policy. Trump threw an insult. El-Sayed threw one back.
The actual contest starts now
The primary was just round one. El-Sayed faces Republican former congressman Mike Rogers in November, who previously lost narrowly to Democrat Elissa Slotkin in 2024. Michigan remains one of the tightest swing states in the country, Trump carried it in 2016 and 2024, Biden won it in 2020. Holding the seat Peters is vacating matters directly to Democratic hopes of winning back the Senate.
If elected, El-Sayed would be the first Muslim member of the US Senate. The Guardian reports he describes himself as a capitalist rather than a democratic socialist, though Republicans have wasted no time painting him as a radical leftist regardless.
How it landed online
The line went down especially well with people who’ve spent years arguing Democrats should stop treating Trump like a normal political opponent.
@thejackhopkins: “Ohhhh. THIS is how you do it. I’ve waited so long for someone to handle that prick like this.” @beckermn06: “Finally a dem willing to get a bit dirty to fight the disgusting prez.” @BenjaminPDixon: “That was so well presented it couldn’t have been scripted better.” @jimstewartson: “I’m all in. Absolutely savage.” @jaubreyYT: “There’s no one doing it like him man.”
There was also a callback to Trump’s recent hair transformation, which had already sparked plenty of memes of its own. @covie_93: “I just know that when Trump saw this his wig flew into the stratosphere.”
@rabbitSZN2 saw something bigger in it: “These new younger dem pols are starting to fight fire with fire. About fucking time. Now we just gotta get them in office.”
Whether trading insults with Trump actually helps El-Sayed win a genuinely split state is a separate question entirely, this election gets decided by healthcare, living costs, foreign policy, and turnout, not one-liners. For a single afternoon, though, he dominated the conversation with eight words and a perfectly timed exit.
Trump’s spent years making political news by insulting people. This time, someone handed it right back before the reporter had even finished processing the answer.
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