Cornel West VP Pick ‘Absolutely’ Stands by Comments Comparing Police to KKK on CNN

Melina Abdullah, the running mate of independent presidential candidate Cornel West, defended her previous comments comparing police to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) during an appearance on CNN, Thursday.

In an interview with West and Abdullah on CNN NewsNight, host Abby Phillip told Abdullah, “You have tweeted in the past about supporting Defund the Police, which is something that I think perhaps some people in the Black Lives Matter movement support, but also this tweet from back in 2015: ‘The KKK, the police, and government officials are one in the same.'”

Phillip then asked, “I wonder, do you stand by that comment?”

“Absolutely,” replied Abdullah:

I want us to understand the history of policing in this country, and so Twitter doesn’t allow you to give a whole history of policing in this country, but in a few sentences, we can just confirm that there is no historian that I’ve ever come in contact with who disputes the fact that policing in this country hails from slave catching. And so when we say that policing is the new millennial slave catching, we’re not saying that we don’t want public safety. We’re saying we want real public safety where community is really centered, where Black safety is centered, and we know that when Black people are safe, we also create safety for everyone else.

West’s remarks on the topic were more vague, with the presidential candidate expressing support for the abolition of “police brutality” instead of the police overall.

“Police must be accountable, but we have to understand policing in the context of the larger communal conditions which have to do with too many poor people, not enough access to education,” he told Phillip.

Watch above via CNN.