Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed dodges question on whether he still supports defunding the police
Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed avoided answering whether he still wants to "defund the police" and why he deleted past posts supporting those efforts.
In November, El-Sayed was accused of deleting multiple social media posts supporting calls to "defund" the police in 2020 and 2021.
"Most major US cities spend WAY TOO MUCH on police departments to police poverty & WAY TOO LITTLE on public schools, health departments, recreation departments, & housing to eliminate poverty," El-Sayed wrote in one June 2020 post on X, then-Twitter, just several weeks after the death of George Floyd. "Fixing that is what the #Defund movement is about."
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El-Sayed was asked about these posts on CNN, who first reported the story, and what the reason was behind deleting them.
"Well, let me just speak to a vision for public safety that I think all of us can agree with," El-Sayed responded Monday. "I think all of us want to be safe. We want to know that we can get home safely. We don’t want to worry about being the victim of somebody’s violence, whether it’s from a neighbor or the state itself."
He added, "And we got to get serious about the kind of policing we need. For too long, we have not invested in the kind of recruitment and retention and retirement that has people from local communities wanting to join in and be a part of keeping public safety. But also, for too long, our answer to every problem has been someone with a gun."
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El-Sayed went on to describe his support for "community violence intervention" and suggested we needed to "get past the past" and look to the future without explaining why he deleted the original posts.
When CNN's Kaitlan Collins followed up asking if his beliefs had changed, El-Sayed continued to avoid directly answering whether he still wants to defund the police.
"Well, look, at that time I was a professor. I was teaching at the edge of criminal justice and public health. At this point, I’m running for U.S. Senate, and in my experiences as a public official, I understand deeply that we have to all come together to think past. But I’ll tell you this — we need investments in the right things," El-Sayed said.
He acknowledged investments in "recruitment and retention for law enforcement" but also emphasized the need to invest in "public health" for the "safety that we really need and deserve."
Fox News Digital reached out to El-Sayed's campaign for comment.
El-Sayed has faced growing antisemitism concerns based on some of his public comments and his decision to rally with far-left Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who has been accused of espousing antisemitic beliefs.
In April, the Michigan candidate agreed with the idea that Israel is "just as evil" as the terrorist group Hamas.
"Yes, killing tens of thousands of people makes you pretty damn evil," El-Sayed said. "It’s not how evil is this one versus that one — Hamas: Evil, Israeli government: Evil. We can say both."