El Sayed says Donald and Melania ‘don’t like each other’ after Trump’s couple photo post

Abdul el Sayed wants to talk about whether the Trumps like each other. That's the hill Michigan Democrats have picked to plant their flag on, apparently, three weeks after their nominee got compared unfavorably in a photo the President posted for laughs. Instead of talking about grocery prices in Detroit or the auto tariffs everyone in that state actually cares about, we're doing marital psychoanalysis of a sitting president based on a Truth Social post.

Here's the thing nobody on that side wants to say out loud: Trump baited him, and el Sayed took it. A late-night meme post from the President is not a policy challenge. It doesn't require a rebuttal about the state of anyone's marriage. It requires either ignoring it or hitting back with something sharper than playground psychology about who "likes" whom. El Sayed had an opening to talk about why he'd be a better senator than whoever the GOP fields, and he spent it guessing at the emotional temperature of someone else's marriage.

This is the pattern with a lot of Democratic candidates lately. Trump throws an elbow, sometimes a genuinely silly one, and instead of running past it they stop and swing back on his terms. It plays fine online for a news cycle. It does nothing for the guy trying to convince a union worker in Flint that he's focused on their paycheck and not on Truth Social drama. Voters notice which candidate is talking about their lives and which one is talking about the President's.

If el Sayed wants to be a senator, fine, that's a real conversation worth having. But answering a meme with a marriage take isn't a campaign strategy. It's a tell.