Sen. Tim Scott said Republicans will keep the Senate after the midterms, arguing that Democratic nominees in Texas and Michigan have given the GOP a campaign message built around ideology, cultural fights and candidate judgment.
The South Carolina Republican, who leads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, laid out that case on NBC’s “Meet the Press” while looking toward November races in Texas, Michigan and Iowa.
“Well, I am very confident that we will be in the majority at the end of November this year,” Scott said. “You know, let me tell you why we are facing the most dangerous, radical and, frankly weird Democrats I’ve seen in my lifetime.”
Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed has drawn some of the NRSC’s most aggressive attacks.
El-Sayed would become the first Muslim senator if elected. Democrats have accused Republicans of inciting Islamophobia after the committee’s social media posts brought up his faith and alleged “terrorist ties” without evidence.
Scott pointed to El-Sayed’s primary campaign appearance with Hasan Piker, the Twitch streamer who once apologized for comments about the U.S. deserving the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“Birds of a feather flock together,” Scott said. “The company you keep does matter.”
El-Sayed has denounced Piker’s past remarks, but Scott said a public disavowal does not erase the decision to keep campaigning with him.
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“You can’t denounce it with your words and do something different with your actions,” Scott said. “We believe what you do, not just what you say.”
El-Sayed answered Republican claims that he is “too radical” during his own “Meet the Press” interview earlier this month.
“We always knew they were going to go here,” El-Sayed said.
He rejected the label by pointing to groceries and healthcare, saying those positions should not be treated as extreme.
“At the end of the day, it’s not radical to believe that people should be able to afford their groceries. It’s not radical to believe that you should have healthcare in this country,” he said.
El-Sayed also said Republicans would try to define him by his name before adding, “America is a lot bigger than very small people.”
Vice President JD Vance has used El-Sayed to argue that Democrats have left behind the workers once represented by his late grandfather, a welder for 40 years who voted Democrat because he believed it was “the party of union men.”
Vance said today’s Democrats look more like “the party of graduate students” than the workers who keep a facility running.
So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no… https://t.co/JApcsCW4kU
— Dr. Abdul El-Sayed (@AbdulElSayed) August 22, 2026
The vice president tied that argument to El-Sayed’s past remarks linking criticism of Sharia law to White supremacy.
“I’d love to go back in time and tell my papa that there is a man who claims to stand for working people who says not only should we have Sharia law, but if you criticize it you’re a White supremacist,” Vance said. “That’s not my grandpa’s Democratic Party, my friend.”
El-Sayed hit back Saturday with a post about second lady Usha Vance.
“So do we think JD is taking Usha with him back in time to meet Papaw, or no…” El-Sayed wrote, in an apparent reference to the second lady’s Indian ethnicity.
He also aimed a post at Natalie Harp, an aide to President Donald Trump, after Trump criticized him at a rally for campaigning with Piker, who has said that “America deserved 9/11.”
Online Democrats and far-left media figures have spent the past two weeks suggesting that Trump and Harp have an improper relationship.
“Natalie, I think he’s had a little too much iPad for the week. He needs his rest,” El-Sayed wrote.
Natalie, I think he’s had a little too much iPad for the week. He needs his rest. https://t.co/QwgGEtQY2p
— Dr. Abdul El-Sayed (@AbdulElSayed) August 22, 2026
Scott’s Texas argument rested on Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico, who defeated Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett in the March 3, 2026, primary and now faces Republican candidate Paxton.
“Let’s start in Texas,” Scott said. “James Talarico believes that God is non-binary. He’s a person who’s so out of step with Texans that we’re seeing a coalition building around our candidate, Paxton.”
Scott said the anti-Talarico coalition reaches beyond Republicans.
“Republicans, Democrats and independents coming together to make sure that James Talarico never sees the Senate floor,” Scott said.
Texas Rep. Beth Van Duyne, a Republican, gave the GOP’s Texas critique another hard edge on “The Hill Sunday” with host Chris Stirewalt.
She called Talarico “pretty much a complete DSA candidate,” referring to the Democratic Socialists of America, though Talarico has never belonged to the left-wing political group.
“His views would kill Texas,” Van Duyne said.
Van Duyne said most Texans would reject the politics she connected to his campaign, including a focus on trans children, government control over production and hostility toward Christianity.
“I don’t think the majority of Texans are going to agree that we need to think about trans kids all the time, that we need to put all the means of production in the government, that if you are a Christian, that you’re going to hate Christianity,” Van Duyne said.
Crockett raised a different problem for Talarico from inside the Democratic Party after losing to him in the March 3, 2026, Senate primary.
On Friday’s episode of the “Front Page” podcast, she questioned whether Black voters were showing much energy for his campaign.
“I personally don’t feel like the excitement necessarily exists within the black community right now, like I don’t feel like they’re excited, right?” Crockett said.
