‘You Deleted the Tweets!’ Kasie Hunt Fires Back After Abdul El-Sayed Takes Shot at CNN During Heated Interview

CNN’s Kasie Hunt fired back at Abdul El-Sayed after the controversial Michigan Democrat took a shot at her and her employer during a heated Thursday afternoon interview.

Here’s how the exchange between the host and candidate for U.S. Senate went:

HUNT: I also wanted to ask you about some of the tweets that you deleted as you were, you know, in the course of this race just before, around this question of defunding the police. This is also something likely to come up in a general election, should you win this primary. Do you stand by what you had previously said, that police, in support of defunding the police? Or do you believe police should be funded?

EL-SAYED: So Kasie, in my time leading Wayne County’s Department of Health, Human, and Veteran Services, I had the responsibility of rebuilding a juvenile detention facility. I raised salaries 35% for workers there to make sure that the public health emergency that we had to call no longer existed. So judge me by my work rather than some deleted tweets. Because nobody ever asked me across the 100 and –

HUNT: Why’d you delete the tweets?

EL-SAYED: I deleted all the tweets because I didn’t want them to be taken out of context like this so that you could distract from the actual conversation that Michiganders really want to have about what they want their leadership to actually fight for them to do.

HUNT: Well, I think the question is just, if you’re leading, would you fight to defund the police or would you not?

EL-SAYED: I’ve already told you what I did. Judge me by my work, judge me by work. I funded the system because it needed to be funded. Too often, the conversation we have is fund or defund. 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 actually protect people, whether you’re talking about people on the streets or people in law enforcement. That means investing in recruitment and retirement for law enforcement, it also means investing in community violence intervention, investing in behavioral health response, investing in public health, in anti-poverty measures. Those are things that are not mutually exclusive. And I think this debate about 2020, and the ways that tweets are going to play, are really nice on CNN if you want to get clicks. They’re not that effective, and nobody really asks me about them on the on the streets or in communities in Michigan. So if you wanna 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.

HUNT: So voters shouldn’t look at the fact that you deleted the tweets as evidence that you no longer support the things that you said?

EL-SAYED:  Kasie, you might-, you might find that to be a very important conversation.

HUNT: I mean, listen, I understand what you’re saying about-

EL-SAYED: I’m just talking about what I’m hearing from people in Michigan.

HUNT: I understand. I understand, but you deleted the tweets, right? That’s what I’m asking you. I’m asking you about an action that you took, okay?

EL-SAYED: I’m talking about the action that I took to actually fund the juvenile detention facility to make sure that youth in that facility were safe. Now, tweets are not quite as much of an action as the work that I did when I was in public service, but I appreciate the line of questioning and if you wanna keep doing it, that’s fine, but I’m just telling you that I think most people are more interested in whether or not you’re fighting for their housing, whether or not you’re not fighting for the schools, whether or not you wanna keep their tax dollars here at home.

Watch above via CNN.

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