A CBS News correspondent deleted a post criticizing Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed after it drew backlash from left-leaning pundits who demanded she be fired.
The episode began at a Saturday town hall, where a voter named Tommy asked El-Sayed whether he would disavow the Muslim Brotherhood, citing reports about El-Sayed’s alleged family connections to the group.
“Sure,” El-Sayed said. “Yeah, absolutely. But I want to ask the question that you’re asking: Why are you asking the question?”
El-Sayed then accused the voter of assuming he held “dual loyalties” because of his Muslim background.
“Why would you actually think that about me? Why would you actually think that? Why would you? Have you asked everybody in your life if they disavow them [the Muslim Brotherhood]? So why are you asking me?” El-Sayed said.
El-Sayed later posted a clip of the exchange himself, writing: “This is Tommy. Tommy had a question about my allegiances. Listen to the end to hear about his.”
CBS News correspondent Jan Crawford responded to that clip on X with criticism of El-Sayed’s answer.
“Tommy, thank you. I had to watch this twice to catch Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s nanosecond ‘yeah absolutely’ response. His subsequent uninterrupted three-minute diatribe proving your exact point is the kind of spectacular self own most ppl only dream about triggering. Congrats,” Crawford wrote.
By Sunday, Crawford had deleted the post. She followed up with another post calling the original tweet a violation of her network’s standards.
“Earlier, I tweeted a video from an Abdul El-Sayed town hall. I deleted that tweet because it was a violation of CBS News standards. I apologize,” Crawford wrote.
The deletion came after a wave of criticism from Democratic operatives and progressive commentators. Democratic consultant Karen Finney wrote: “No Jan — you got caught red handed trying to help prop up a paid GOP operative who was there to spread false, racist lies about Abdul because he is Muslim. Shame on you.”
Progressive strategist Keith Edwards wrote that Crawford “SHOULD be fired, but it’s CBS news, so she’ll get promoted.” Zeteo CEO Mehdi Hasan went further, tying the moment to CBS leadership: “This woman endorsing a GOP operative’s smear campaign against @AbdulElSayed is apparently a ‘straight news’ CBS reporter. This is what David Ellison paid for. This is what Bari Weiss delivered.”
A CBS News spokesperson pointed to Crawford’s own statement and declined to add anything further.
Not everyone agreed the reporter owed an apology. Curtis Houck, managing editor of the media watchdog NewsBusters, said the campaign to get Crawford fired reflects a double standard in the press.
“The double standard is glaring. Reporters from CNN, MS NOW, The New York Times, and Washington Post tweet all kinds of incendiary hot takes on the daily, and none of the elitist media defenders bat an eye. But for someone at Bari Weiss’s CBS News to call out the tone of a Democrat? It’s unforgivable. Jan should be allowed to speak her mind and has earned it as one of the few actual journalists on the networks, in addition to a long career covering the Supreme Court, and earned the trust of the justices. Team Bari Weiss needs to tell these people calling for Jan’s job to shove it,” Houck said.
The flap comes amid weeks of scrutiny over claims that El-Sayed’s family has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. His campaign has previously called the allegations “racist and untrue.” But on Saturday, El-Sayed confirmed to Fox News senior correspondent Mike Tobin that his sister-in-law, Mariam Jukaku, had been named in a 2016 federal terrorist watchlist lawsuit.
“She did nothing wrong and was captured on that and then sued and got off,” El-Sayed said. “You’ve got this system where folks are guilty until proven innocent because they’ve got different kinds of names, because of the infrastructure that people like Mike Rogers set up.”
El-Sayed’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the Crawford matter.
