CBS News Reporter Sparks Backlash After Deleting Post Attacking Abdul El-Sayed

CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford sparked backlash and was forced to apologize after praising a town hall attendee who questioned Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed about disavowing the Muslim Brotherhood.

The since-deleted response featured footage of an encounter between a heckler identified as "Tommy" and El-Sayed. Tommy raised an allegation promoted by El-Sayed’s Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, suggesting the candidate had ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, a subject discussed in previous coverage.

When Tommy asked El-Sayed if he would "disavow the Muslim Brotherhood," El-Sayed replied:

“Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Why are you asking the question?”

After Tommy told El-Sayed he'd asked the question because the Muslim Brotherhood is "a terrorist group," El-Sayed dug deeper:

“But what are you implying? Do you assume that I wouldn’t?” ...

“You’re asking the question because implicitly you assume that I’ll have dual loyalties, right? You assume that somehow I wouldn’t disavow, or that I’ll have some higher order allegiance than the Constitution.”

Independent journalist Marisa Kabas, who writes from the left, subsequently identified “Tommy” as the son of Republican political strategist Timmy Teepell, whom she characterized as a right-wing plant.

Kabas reported that Teepell worked for Bobby Jindal, first as a congressman and later as Louisiana governor, from 2004 to 2011, and managed Jindal’s unsuccessful 2015 presidential primary campaign. He joined the political consulting firm OnMessage in 2011 and helped Josh Hawley win election as Missouri attorney general in 2016, before assisting Hawley’s successful U.S. Senate campaign two years later.

As footage of El-Sayed's exchange with Teepell circulated online, Crawford shared the following in a since-deleted post on X:

“Tommy, thank you. I had to watch this twice to catch Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s nanosecond, ‘yeah, absolutely,’ response. His subsequent uninterrupted diatribe proving your exact point is the kind of spectacular self-own is the kind ppl only dream about triggering. Congrats.”

You can see the post below.

@janCBS/X

The backlash was swift.

In response, Crawford deleted her post and acknowledged it had violated the 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."

You can see her post below.

But critics were not buying it.

Sounds like this is what we can expect now that CBS is under editorial control by the right-wing's Bari Weiss.