CBS News’ chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford apologized for a since-deleted tweet criticizing Abdul El-Sayed in a manner she disclosed “was a violation” of the network’s news 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 in a Sunday morning X post.
The deleted post in question was Crawford resharing a video from El-Sayed’s official account, but siding with “Tommy,” the town hall attendee who asked the Michigan senatorial candidate to disavow the Muslim Brotherhood.
“Tommy, thank you,” Crawford wrote, per a screenshot that continued circulating Sunday. “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 people only dream about triggering. Congrats.”
Watch the full town hall interaction with “Tommy” and El-Sayed in the video post below:
In the moment from a Saturday town hall in Michigan, El-Sayed’s response to disavowing the Muslim Brotherhood, which Tommy cited as a terrorist organization, was roundly applauded by supporters online after the Senate hopeful centered the religious freedoms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
Relating the question back to his own faith as a Muslim, the politician then called back to President John F. Kennedy and concerns surrounding his presidency as a Catholic.
“When he ran for president, he was asked whether or not he was going to have allegiance to the Pope at the Vatican, because of course he’s Catholic, and his answer famously was that he was not running to be a Catholic president; he was running to be president that happened to be Catholic,” El-Sayed said. “So it’s important, I think, because you ask this question in a way that suggests that somehow our Constitution shouldn’t be the thing that all of us bear allegiance to. And I’m just telling you that for me, that the Constitution is the guiding light.”
“Best job of politely calling out someone’s bigotry I’ve ever seen,” one viewer wrote in response.
“Maybe Tommy should ask where the president’s allegiance is because it looks like its to Russia,” wrote another.
Crawford, of course, appears to have felt differently, emphasizing that El-Sayed only briefly disavowed the brotherhood in his long-winded response.
Crawford joined CBS News in 2009 and serves as its chief legal correspondent and contributes to “CBS Evening News,” “CBS Mornings” and “Face the Nation,” in addition CBS News Radio and CBSNews.com.
