It is never a good sign for a Democrat candidate when even CNN decides to call them out. That is precisely what happened this week to Abdul El Sayed, the far-left favorite running in Michigan's Democrat Senate primary.

The man who once proudly waved the Defund the Police banner now wants voters to believe he never said it, and CNN came armed with proof to the contrary, as reported by Red State.

El Sayed’s campaign has been trying to polish his radical image as the race heats up. But when CNN’s Manu Raju rolled the tape during a Sunday interview, things got uncomfortable fast.

Raju asked why El Sayed had repeatedly denied ever calling for police defunding when there were multiple videos and tweets from 2020 showing otherwise.

Here's What They're Not Telling You About Your Retirement

Flustered, El Sayed launched into an incoherent response about libraries, Iraq, and excess military hardware.

“You fixate on the word ‘defund,’ but what I’m talking about is war material that we made too much of during the war in Iraq,” he said.

“We had to sell it to local police departments.” It was a performance that looked more like verbal gymnastics than a straightforward answer.

The Democrat hopeful then tried to spin it as a semantic misunderstanding. He claimed that defunding did not actually mean taking money away from law enforcement.

FREE Gun Law Map: Laws Don't Pause During Social Unrest

It supposedly meant reallocating funds to things like social work or after-school programs.

Unfortunately for him, Americans heard the Defund the Police crowd loud and clear in 2020 as they demanded massive cuts to police budgets across major cities.

The exchange highlighted two big problems for El Sayed’s campaign. First, his record shows that he did support defunding law enforcement when it was trendy on the far left.

Second, he is now trying to run from that record, knowing that Michigan voters want stronger police support, not weaker. The phony rebranding is not fooling anyone.

CNN, usually a safe haven for Democrats, did not let him off easy.

Raju pressed again, pointing out that in past interviews, El Sayed had explicitly said police budgets should be reduced to fund community resources.

That is the very definition of defunding, no matter how he tries to dress it up.

This embarrassment comes on top of another credibility issue. El Sayed was recently caught calling himself a “physician,” despite not holding a valid medical license in Michigan or New York.

Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan grilled him over the misleading title, pointing out that without a license, one is not legally considered a physician. His dismissive response only made him look more arrogant and untrustworthy.

The pattern is clear. Whenever cornered about his record or résumé, El Sayed dodges and plays word games.

He acts as though voters are too ignorant to understand the plain meaning of his past statements.

But the “Defund the Police” slogan is not one that people easily forget. They saw cities like Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and Oakland cut funding, fire officers, and suffer surging crime as a result.

Democrats know the slogan is political poison now. They are desperate to rewrite history and pretend it was all just about “reform.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made it brutally clear years ago, saying:

“Defunding police means defunding police.”

Those words were not taken out of context. They were a demand from the left to strip police of budgets and power. El Sayed was part of that movement until it became inconvenient.

Michigan voters remember what happened when politicians chose ideology over safety. The spike in violent crime after police budget cuts in blue cities was not a coincidence.

Families want safer neighborhoods, not lectures on “reimagining public safety.” The backlash to the Defund movement is one reason Republicans remain competitive in Michigan despite the state’s blue tilt.

El Sayed’s effort to hide his true position only proves how out of touch his ideology really is. Instead of acknowledging the obvious failure of the Defund agenda, he lashes out when confronted with his own words.

Watching him squirm as even CNN demands answers says everything about how far he has fallen from the spotlight he once craved.

Democrats can repackage their message however they want, but voters have long memories. They saw who cheered during the summer of 2020 while police officers were assaulted and precincts burned.

They know who demanded budget cuts in the name of “justice.” Abdul El Sayed cannot erase his fingerprints from that movement, no matter how many interviews he gives or tweets he deletes.

If El Sayed keeps unraveling under friendly fire from establishment media, Republicans could have an even stronger path to victory in Michigan’s Senate race.

The only thing more damaging than bad policy is a candidate who cannot tell the truth about it.

Warning: Account balances and purchasing power no longer tell the same story. Know in 2 minutes if your retirement is working for you.