A wild video of Trump supporter Jake Lang trying to disrupt an Abdul El-Sayed campaign event weeks ago is making the rounds again and what happened inside that room now carries a little more weight after El-Sayed’s success.
Lang had come looking for a confrontation.
Instead, he found himself drowned out by a room full of citizens chanting “USA! USA!” — and, at least for one woman in the crowd, that apparently was not enough.
As Lang filmed himself confronting members of Abdul El-Sayed’s security team at a Detroit campaign event on July 18, El-Sayed urged supporters to clap him out.
Then a woman raised both middle fingers toward Lang and joined the chant, producing the moment that later went viral.
“It’s this for me, sis was not holding back,” one social media user wrote.
Another said, “The fact that Jake Lang still shows up places after getting beat up still blows my mind…he’s a terrorist, he’s a white supremist and people who follow him are the same.”
When Lang interrupted the canvass launch, El-Sayed did not give him the extended clash he appeared to be seeking.
“We’re going to clap him out!” El-Sayed told the crowd before leading supporters in chants of “USA! USA!”
The tactic worked. Lang was escorted out as the crowd cheered, and El-Sayed explained why he chose a patriotic chant for a provocateur known for anti-Muslim and racist rhetoric.
Lang spent more than four years in federal custody awaiting trial after being arrested on charges of assaulting a Capitol Police officer with an aluminum bat during the Jan. 6 riot.
Released in January 2025 after President Donald Trump’s mass pardon of Jan. 6 defendants, Lang almost immediately returned to his ultra-right-wing activism pursuits, many of which consist of staging demonstrations intended to offend observers.
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“He doesn’t hate me,” El-Sayed told the crowd. “He doesn’t even hate you. You know what he hates? He hates America.”
The confrontation was only a glimpse of the political battle now taking shape around El-Sayed, whose narrow victory in Michigan’s Senate primary has made him one of the party’s most closely watched candidates and a major target for Trump and Republicans heading into November.
With the primary over, El-Sayed will now face Republican Mike Rogers in a race that could reshape control of the Senate, while national Democrats who once backed Rep. Haley Stevens, his primary opponent, are quickly closing ranks around him.
El-Sayed defeated Stevens despite a well-funded establishment campaign arrayed against him.
Super PACs spent more than $60 million supporting Stevens, including more than $30 million from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, according to reports.
El-Sayed instead relied heavily on a field operation that knocked on 190,000 doors and mobilized about 10,000 volunteers.
Just one week after the vote, El-Sayed is now being treated as a national test case for the Democratic Party’s progressive wing.
He ran on Medicare for All, opposed U.S. military aid to Israel and rejected special-interest money. He also has faced criticism over his association with Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who previously said on a livestream that “America deserved 9/11.” Piker later apologized.
El-Sayed called his remark “dumb” and described its continued use against him as “gotcha politics.”
“I’m less concerned now with who I’m campaigning with [and] a lot more concerned about who I’m campaigning to. We’ve got a lot of work to do to continue to build the coalition that’s going to beat Mike Rogers,” El-Sayed said.
On Sunday, he told NBC “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker that he had spoken with former President Barack Obama after the primary.
“It was a really warm and inspiring conversation,” El-Sayed said.
“I was grateful for his advice,” he added. “It was very warm, very inviting, and I know that he knows the critical role that Michigan is going to play in holding [President Donald] Trump accountable, in winning back the Senate, and in building forward the future that we need.”
Asked whether Obama would campaign with him, El-Sayed said, “I really hope so.”
Republicans, meanwhile, have wasted little time making El-Sayed a national target. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has released videos calling him “radical” and “dangerous,” while Trump has called him a “communist” and “full of sh-t.”
El-Sayed said Republicans’ use of his full name echoed attacks once aimed at Obama.
“We always knew they were going to go here. I mean, notice how they chose to use my full name in echoes to exactly what they did against President Obama,” El-Sayed told Welker.
“At the end of the day, it’s not radical to believe that people should be able to afford their groceries,” he added. “It’s not radical to believe that you should have healthcare in this country.”
Trump has also described El-Sayed as “a man of hate,” saying, “Abdul El-Sayed, lovely gentleman, he’s a man of hate,” Trump said during a Las Vegas event on Wednesday. “And now he’s going around saying, “No, I love everybody. He doesn’t love everybody. Put him in office, you’re going to find out what he loves.”
Trump escalated the attacks Saturday night on Truth Social, posting a side-by-side image of himself and first lady Melania Trump alongside El-Sayed, who is Muslim, and his wife, Sarah Jukaku, wearing a hijab. He captioned the comparison, “Two VERY DIFFERENT America’s.”
The GOP sees El-Sayed as an opportunity to nationalize the race around immigration, socialism and cultural issues. A Republican strategist described him as “the national version of Mamdani,” while Vice President JD Vance invoked the possibility of a future President El-Sayed.
“We don’t want the next administration, whoever — god forbid you’re gonna have President El-Sayed in three years,” Vance said, adding, “We don’t want him to undo all the incredible work that we’ve been doing when we’ve been taking out the fraudsters and saving the American people money.”
