Abdul El-Sayed once told a Detroit radio audience he believed police needed to be defunded, and now he says he “never, never” said any such thing.
Quick Take
- Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed now says he backs funding police recruitment, retention and retirement.
- A 2020 Detroit Public Radio interview captured him saying, “I believe that we do need to defund the police.”
- Reports say El-Sayed deleted thousands of old posts, including about a dozen supporting the defund movement.
- His campaign insists he has always supported law enforcement funding, setting up a direct clash with the recorded past.
A Campaign Promise Built On Funding Police
El-Sayed’s current message is specific. In a September 19 campaign video, he said, “We’ve got to fund all of the things we need. For some problems, that is going to be a person with a gun.” He added that recruitment, retention and retirement all need funding. His spokesperson Cole Wozniak flatly denied any support for defunding police, saying El-Sayed wants law enforcement funded “to identify, prosecute, and protect communities from violent crime.”
That sounds clear enough on its own. The trouble is it doesn’t match what El-Sayed said six years ago, when the “defund the police” movement was at its peak and he was happy to use its exact language in public, on the record, without hesitation.
The 2020 Tape That Won’t Go Away
In a June 2020 interview, El-Sayed told Detroit Public Radio, “I believe we need to defund the police insofar as defunding the police is disinvesting in the means of incarcerating someone or killing them on the streets.” He pushed to redirect that money toward education, community engagement and empowerment programs instead. That is not a slip of the tongue. It is a full sentence built around the very phrase he now claims he never used.
CNN’s review of his old social media posts found the same theme repeated. He argued that cities spent “WAY TOO MUCH” policing poverty and “WAY TOO LITTLE” on schools, health departments and housing, calling that imbalance the whole point of the defund movement. He also described police departments as “standing armies” in posts that have since vanished from his accounts.
When Asked Directly, He Says It Never Happened
Confronted with his own record, El-Sayed told Bridge Michigan, “I actually never, never called for defunding. My goal in that conversation was to help everybody to understand what we were talking about.” That is a tough sell when the tape exists and the quote is unambiguous. Voters do not need a journalism degree to hear the word “defund” and understand what it means.
Thousands Of Deleted Posts Raise Obvious Questions
CNN reported that El-Sayed scrubbed thousands of older social media posts, including roughly a dozen that explicitly supported defunding police. He told CNN he deleted them because he didn’t want them “taken out of context.” But the posts weren’t ambiguous. They supported a movement by name and argued for redirecting police money elsewhere. Erasing the record doesn’t erase what voters already captured in screenshots and archived interviews.
Why The Distinction Matters To Michigan Voters
Research on public opinion shows most Americans support changing how police operate but strongly reject the actual word “defund.” One survey found over 71 percent opposed the phrase outright, even though roughly half supported shifting some police budget dollars toward community services. That gap explains why a politician might embrace reallocation while running from the label once it becomes a liability at the ballot box.
Studies of cities that actually tried defunding found most quietly restored police budgets to higher levels within a few years, often because of political backlash and rising crime concerns. El-Sayed’s shift fits that same national pattern: embrace the slogan when it’s popular on the left, abandon it the moment it threatens a statewide campaign.
None of this means every word in his 2020 interview defines his entire record today. People can change positions. But changing a position and denying you ever held it are two very different things. Michigan voters deserve a straight answer, not a campaign spokesperson’s rewrite of a tape that still exists.
What Voters Still Don’t Know
El-Sayed has not released a detailed public safety plan showing exactly how much funding would go to recruitment versus community programs, nor has he explained which parts of his 2020 agenda he still supports. Republican ads have leaned hard into the contradiction, and FactCheck.org confirmed his current platform calls for investing in police recruitment and retention even as it flagged his past support for reallocating funds elsewhere. Until El-Sayed answers for the tape directly, the gaslighting charge will keep sticking.
Sources:
cnn.com, politifact.com, yahoo.com
