Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed is facing sharp criticism after his campaign posted a doctored image replacing First Lady Melania Trump's name with that of a White House aide, the second time in a week his operation targeted a prominent political spouse.
The El-Sayed campaign posted on X Thursday a manipulated screenshot of the official White House webpage for Melania Trump. The image crossed out the first lady's name and swapped in Natalie Harp, the executive assistant to President Trump. The caption read: "If we're just renaming everything now... When are we making this official?", a reference to Trump's renaming of Lake Ontario to Lake America during the ongoing trade dispute with Canada.
The post landed barely a week after El-Sayed himself targeted Second Lady Usha Vance on the same platform, writing: "So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no...", a remark critics read as a reference to Vance's Indian heritage. Vice President JD Vance had commented that his grandfather would be shocked to know El-Sayed is a serious U.S. Senate contender. El-Sayed's response dragged the vice president's wife into the exchange.
Taken together, the two posts established a pattern that conservatives seized on immediately, and that even some outside observers found difficult to defend.
Republican communicator Matt Whitlock posted on X that the Harp image was amateurish and raised a broader question about the campaign's judgment:
"This is just such a weak, phoned-in effort. My four year-old could come up with better burns than this."
Whitlock then pointed to the recurring target selection:
"Weird how much time this campaign spends talking about other people's wives. When Abdul's not talking about (and clearly thinking a lot about) the vice president and his wife, apparently he's thinking about President Trump and his wife?"
The observation cut to the core of the backlash. El-Sayed is running for a U.S. Senate seat in Michigan. Neither Usha Vance nor Natalie Harp is on the ballot. Neither holds elected office. Yet both became the focus of El-Sayed campaign messaging within days of each other.
Journalist James David Dickson was blunter. "That boy Abdul is drowning, and his team keeps throwing him bricks," he wrote on X.
Conservative advocacy group Michigan Forward posted a two-word verdict: "So this is just gross, right?"
Political commentator Melik Abdul framed the posts as part of a broader pattern on the left, writing on X: "A lil more sexism and misogyny from the Left. This time, it's from the Guy who plays foootsie with Hasan Piker."
The criticism was not limited to social media commentators. Tudor Dixon, the Republican former gubernatorial candidate in Michigan, connected the two incidents and posed a pointed question about El-Sayed's conduct toward women. The New York Post reported Dixon's response:
"He goes after Usha. He goes after Natalie [Harp]. This coward picks on women who are not in his fight. Imagine how he would treat female staffers in the halls of Congress."
Whitlock offered a broader campaign assessment to the Post as well: "Just a bad campaign, bad candidate, bad instincts. Sitting at home on a Saturday morning tweeting bad takes that any normal campaign would shut down."
El-Sayed's campaign did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment asking him to explain what he was implying about Usha Vance in the earlier post. The campaign also did not respond to outreach about the Harp image.
Natalie Harp, the target of the doctored image, serves as executive assistant to the president. She is a longtime Trump supporter who has credited Trump's first-term "right to try" executive order, which allowed terminally ill patients to access experimental treatments, with saving her life after a serious battle with bone cancer. She joined the second Trump administration as a White House aide.
In recent weeks, Harp has been the subject of media coverage and online commentary regarding her relationship with Trump. The Washington Examiner reported that El-Sayed sardonically referenced Harp during a campaign town hall in Farmington Hills, Michigan, telling the crowd: "You know Natalie's going to show him this clip and he's going to be so mad." The remark aligned with a broader Democratic messaging line targeting Trump's closeness with Harp, an attack strategy also employed by Senator Jon Ossoff.
El-Sayed's campaign chose to lean into that line with the doctored White House webpage, a move that drew the first lady into the frame and invited comparisons to the Usha Vance post from the previous weekend.
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle did not hold back in a statement to Fox News Digital:
"Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, who wants to massively raise taxes and defund the police, was just recently exposed for saying American football is 'toxic masculinity' and trashing Thanksgiving. Everything this radical says is moronic."
The statement referenced past El-Sayed remarks that have surfaced during the campaign. El-Sayed has faced repeated scrutiny over scrubbed social media content, including deleted videos on topics ranging from the Second Amendment to July 4th celebrations.
His campaign has also drawn attention for policy reversals. El-Sayed publicly distanced himself from the Green New Deal on live television, though deleted posts showed years of vocal support for the proposal. And a live television appearance in which he compared circumcision to child sex-change procedures drew criticism from both the left and the right.
Separately, resurfaced audio captured El-Sayed downplaying a terrorist attack on a Michigan synagogue, adding another layer to questions about his judgment and instincts on sensitive issues.
The Usha Vance post appeared over the weekend before the Harp image dropped on Thursday. In both cases, El-Sayed or his campaign singled out a woman connected to a Republican officeholder rather than engaging the officeholder directly. Vice President Vance had criticized El-Sayed's record. President Trump had issued the Lake Ontario renaming order. But the campaign's responses bypassed both men and aimed at the women in their orbits.
That choice is what drew the sharpest commentary. Whitlock called it a fixation. Dixon called it cowardice. Michigan Forward called it gross. And El-Sayed's campaign, given two separate chances to explain the reasoning, said nothing.
When a Senate campaign's sharpest content targets women who aren't running for anything, the problem isn't messaging strategy. It's the candidate.
