CNN Calls Out Michigan’s El-Sayed for Previous ‘Defund the Police’ Statements

CNN is calling out Abdul El-Sayed, a Democrat candidate for Michigan’s Senate seat, for his shifting views on the “defund the police” movement.

Before launching his Senate campaign, El-Sayed deleted his X history, including numerous posts touting the “defund the police” movement, according to CNN. He then claimed he didn’t advocate for defunding the police.

“I want to be clear, I actually never, never called for defunding,” El-Sayed told The Detroit News in November 2025. “My goal in that conversation was to help everybody to understand what we were talking about.”

In an “Inside Politics Sunday” interview this week, however, CNN’s Manu Raju played a clip of El-Sayed calling for defunding the police in a radio interview from 2020 before asking El-Sayed why he claimed he never advocated to defund the police.

“I believe that we do need to defund the police insofar as defunding the police is disinvesting in the means of incarcerating someone or killing them on the streets,” El-Sayed said in the clip.

El-Sayed accused Raju of fixating on the word “defund,” and asked if the reporter was opposed to investing in libraries and public services, which El-Sayed had suggested in the clip should receive some of the funding allocated to the police.

Raju interrupted El-Sayed to ask if his stance on defunding the police would be an electability issue in the general election, but El-Sayed brushed off Raju’s skepticism. El-Sayed claimed it wouldn’t hurt him in the election because law enforcement officers themselves want to get home safely, and would rather not have to face people with mental illness. 

“And you talk to folks in law enforcement with whom I’ve worked very closely—they’ll tell you they don’t want to go on those runs where they know that somebody’s in mental crisis,” El-Sayed said. “So maybe instead of investing in war material for PD’s, we invest in a safe retirement for them, and then instead of sending in a guy with a gun, we actually send in a trained mental health professional.”

Earlier this month, CNN’s Kasie Hunt also asked El-Sayed about the posts he deleted that called for defunding the police and whether he held the same position. When El-Sayed sidestepped the question, Hunt pushed back.

“Too often, the conversation we have is fund or defund,” El-Sayed responded. “The question that we don’t ask is what kind of system do we really want? I want us to be investing in the kinds of interventions that protect people, whether you’re talking about people on the streets or people in law enforcement.”

El-Sayed indicated that funding recruitment, anti-poverty measures, behavioral health support, and “community violence intervention” are “not mutually exclusive,” and said that talking about defunding the police wasn’t a worthwhile conversation.

“So if you want to talk about housing, or health care, or corporate dominance in our politics, I think those are a lot more legitimate questions that people are actually asking me about what they want their next senator to do in the state of Michigan, rather than for clickbait in DC,” El-Sayed said.

El-Sayed’s previous statements on law enforcement are making the rounds on social media, too. A 2020 recording El-Sayed made for a University of Michigan online class called “Police Brutality in America Teach-Out” has gone viral in the past few days.

“Do police really need to use guns? Do we need as much of a police force?” El-Sayed asked. “And so, if we ask ourselves about how we spend money in the public, where that money goes, where it comes from, we need to make a lot better decisions about investing in the things that root out poverty, rather than investing in policing poverty.”

The post caught the attention of Jordan Domingue, a former Marine who claims he provided security for El-Sayed. A LinkedIn profile under the name Jordan Domingue says that he is employed in executive protection and was the Director of Security for a U.S. Senate campaign until January, the same timeline cited in an exclusive interview by the Michigan Enjoyer.

Domingue was unable to be reached for comment.

“I protected this man with a gun for two years, some average of 6-7 days a week, typically 12-16hr days,” Domingue said in a post. “Like so many things with Abdul, it’s pure hypocrisy.”

In an interview with the Michigan Enjoyer in April after leaving the campaign in January, Domingue noted that he rejected the campaign’s offer for financial compensation in exchange for him signing a separation agreement because he wanted to warn people that El-Sayed is antisemitic and not fit for Senate.

Daily Signal contacted El-Sayed’s campaign for comment but did not receive a response.