Notoriously volatile candidate lashes out as scruff-related insecurities boil over
Abdul El-Sayed gets really defensive when you mention his height. The Democrat from Michigan is 5-foot-8 (at most) in thick-soled shoes. He’d be one of the shortest men to serve in the U.S. Senate since the Spanish-American War. We haven’t had a sub-5’8″ president since William McKinley, who was elected in 1896 and born before the California Gold Rush.
He might be even more sensitive about his weird facial hair. (Technically a beard, but just barely.)
Last week, for example, El-Sayed issued a bizarrely aggressive response after Vice President J.D. Vance mocked his “patchy beard.” In a tone that liberals used to denounce as “toxically masculine,” El-Sayed challenged Vance, whose beard is full and normal, to a weight-lifting contest.
“How much paste did you have to put on your face to get that little beard?” he said, defensively. “At least mine, what you see is what you get. And at the end of the day, with my beard, I’m happy to say, look. If he thinks that my beard is somehow indicative of my strength, I’m happy to invite him to any weight room, in any place … I’d love to see him on a bench.” (Context: Short arms confer a mechanical advantage when bench-pressing.)
El-Sayed, who has never publicly admitted using steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs, went on to accuse Vance of being “juiced up” on testosterone replacement therapy, and questioned whether the VP’s comparatively thicker, lusher beard was “actually real.”
It was merely the latest manifestation of the candidate’s beard-related insecurities.
El-Sayed has repeatedly told the (unverified) story of an angry confrontation with a Muslim gas station clerk who told him his beard was “too short.” An early version ended with El-Sayed smashing a bottle of vodka on the ground before walking out. He removed that detail in subsequent retellings after Republicans suggested, not unreasonably, that this was the behavior of a “deeply disturbed man with anger management issues.” Just last month, El-Sayed threatened to tackle his GOP opponent.
There are many examples of El-Sayed airing his “beard” insecurities on the campaign trail, usually in the context of wishing it wasn’t so patchy. He keeps suggesting that his critics are obsessed with his stubble for Islamophobic reasons.
Back in April, while discussing the “racist” attacks on campaign surrogate Hasan Piker, El-Sayed randomly changed the subject to his facial hair. “You know, I’m surprised they didn’t come for my beard,” he said on Sam Seder’s podcast. “Because, like, as a Muslim dude, as an Arab dude, you’re supposed to have a nice beard. Like, I got a weak-ass beard. I don’t know what it is. My dad’s got an incredible beard, right?”
Once El-Sayed started talking about how envious he was of his father’s beard, he couldn’t stop. “My brother has a different mother than me, and both of us got weak-ass beards,” he rambled on. “If I had a nice beard, I’d be like, ‘Damn, like, come at me for my beard,’ but I’d have an awesome beard, though.”
That same month, El-Sayed predicted that AIPAC would try to scare voters by giving him “the beard of [his] dreams” in campaign ads. “My wife will turn down the volume and just be like, ‘Baby, that’s the beard I could have had,'” he said like a normal person who definitely does not suffer from a deep-seated beard inferiority complex.
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