Dem Nominee in Tennessee Special Election: Asking About My Defund Police Tweets Is a ‘Cable News Talking Point’
The Democratic nominee for the special election for Tennessee’s deep-red Seventh Congressional District, Aftyn Behn, fumbled over her words as she fielded a question on her since-deleted tweets calling to defund police. Asking about the posts, Behn said, is a “cable news talking point.”
“Um, I’m, yeah, I’m not going engage in, in, in, uh, cable news talking points, but what I will say is that, um, you know, our communities need solutions, we need local people deciding, uh, solving local problems with local solutions, and that’s not the overreach of a federal government or state government of, is, of which we are dealing with in Nashville and our cities across the state of Tennessee,” Behn said Sunday on MS NOW’s (formerly MSNBC) The Weekend Primetime.
“I don’t remember these tweets,” she added.
When cohost Catherine Rampell asked her again to clarify her position, Behn replied, “Once again, I’m here to talk about my race, which is in literally nine days.”
In since-deleted social media posts, Behn wrote in 2020 that she wanted Nashville’s police department to be dissolved and supported a teachers’ union’s call that defunding the police should be a condition for schools reopening during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also appeared to advocate for anti-police violence.
“[G]ood morning, especially to the 54% of Americans that believe burning down a police station is justified,” she wrote in another post.
Behn’s remarks are at odds with the district she seeks to represent. Behn is running against Republican Matt Van Epps—a former commissioner in Gov. Bill Lee’s (R.) administration—to replace the district’s Republican congressman, Mark Green, who resigned in July to take a job in the private sector. Green ran on a pro-police platform and won the district by more than 20 points last year, as did President Donald Trump and Republican senator Marsha Blackburn.
A September poll by the Nashville Police + Public Safety Alliance also found that residents in Nashville, part of which sits in the seventh district, believe hiring more police officers is one of the best solutions to improving safety.
Behn, a state representative, is backed by the Knoxville chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. Former vice president Kamala Harris, a fellow Democrat who answered policy questions with word salads, joined Behn on the campaign trail last week.
In 2019, meanwhile, Behn smeared her own state as “racist,” the Washington Free Beacon reported. The next year, she said, “I hate this city,” referring to Nashville.
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