Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed spent his entire campaign denying he ever backed defunding the police. Now video from five years ago shows him asking, “Do police really need to use guns?” and questioning why taxpayers fund “people with guns” instead of anti-poverty programs.
The footage directly contradicts El-Sayed’s repeated claims that he never embraced the “defund the police” movement.
El-Sayed is the progressive front-runner in Michigan’s Democratic primary, running against Rep. Haley Stevens for the seat held by retiring Sen. Gary Peters. Republicans see the seat as a prime pickup opportunity in the 2026 midterms.
“Why are we investing so much in people with guns and less in people with the means of being able to invest in young folks, empower folks through their livelihoods, and empower them to live their best lives?”
The video, published by the University of Michigan in 2020 and titled “Systemic Racism as a Public Health Issue,” shows El-Sayed arguing that police funding and use of force constituted a public health crisis rooted in systemic racism.
“Do police really need to use guns? Do we need as much of a police force?” El-Sayed continued in the clip. “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 video follows a CNN report that found El-Sayed leaned into the defund-the-police movement during its 2020 peak. In a June 2020 interview with Detroit Public Radio, El-Sayed claimed he never directly called to “defund the police” but said the principles behind the movement were hard to express in a tweet.
“So, you’ll note, I didn’t say ‘defund the police,’ I just described what needed to be done,” El-Sayed said at the time. “Defunding the police is disinvesting in the means of incarcerating someone or killing them on the streets and investing more in the means of educating and empowering and engaging communities.”
He tried to rebrand his stance as “refunding” the police to stop taxpayer dollars from flowing to “buy war materiel to wage war in our streets.”
El-Sayed’s campaign spokesperson told Fox News Digital that his views have become “more nuanced” after working with law enforcement as director of Health, Human, and Veterans Services for Wayne County, Michigan.
“One simple word has never been enough to fully explain the reforms we need for a challenge as complex as our criminal legal system,” spokesperson Roxie Richner said.
She added that El-Sayed now supports improving law enforcement recruitment and funding while rejecting “militarized policing” and backing community violence intervention programs.
But the candidate can’t shake his old positions. During a recent CNN interview with Kasie Hunt, El-Sayed admitted he deleted his old tweets supporting the movement “because I didn’t want them to be taken out of context like this.”
“I deleted all the tweets, because I didn’t want them to be taken out of context like this.”
El-Sayed dismissed the scrutiny as “clickbait in D.C.” and said voters in Michigan don’t ask him about it on the streets.
“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,” El-Sayed told Hunt. “They’re not that effective, and nobody really asks me about them on the streets or in communities in Michigan.”
El-Sayed is backed by progressive heavyweights including Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He’s part of the progressive wave flooding into the Democratic Party ahead of the 2026 midterms.
The Michigan Senate primary is one of the most consequential races of the cycle. Republicans are eyeing the seat as a must-win pickup opportunity in their push to expand their Senate majority.
