Nota Behn-eh: Defund the Police? Burn Down Nashville PD Stations? Moi?

Pull up your chairs, dear reader, and watch perhaps the worst interview by a politician in recent memory – on a friendly media platform, no less. 

Aftyn Behn, an already beleaguered Democrat candidate for Congress, showed up on M-SNOW this weekend in an attempt to generate better headlines for her TN-07 special election race. Behn has already made national headlines for her attempts to retreat from her magnum opus, Ten Things I Hate About You, Nashville. Behn probably expected a softball promotional video from the interview.

To quote the modern philosopher Mad Dog Tannen: You thought wrong, dude. Really, really, really wrong. 

It does seem that M-SNOW’s hosts on The Weekend hoped to allow her to retract her 2020 positions on “defund the police” and burning down the house in Nashville. Behn, however, was too inept to take the hint:

Q. So you don’t want to clarify whether you still believe that the police should be defunded?

Behn: …once again, I….don’t remember these tweets…

Q. What is your position today, hows that, on this issue?

Behn: …..once again, I’m here to talk about my race, which is,… https://t.co/5HgNBkCsGW

— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) November 24, 2025

Let’s transcribe the entire clip to explore just how badly Behn bungled this interview. One has to wonder whether the first question caught Behn by surprise … and whether her answer caught her interlocutor equally off-guard:

Q: Representative, in 2020 you made some tweets that have since been deleted, that were very critical of police. You said, in those since-deleted tweets, that the Metropolitan Police Department in Nashville should be dissolved, another shared on a teacher’s union tweet that Defund the Police should be a requirement for schools reopening, and another saying “Good morning to the 54% of Americans who believe that burning down a police station is justified.” 2020 was a very fraught year. Do you still stand by those comments, and if not, is there anything you want to clarify?

BEHN: Uh – I’m not going to engage in cable-news talking points, but what I will say is our communities need solutions, we need local people deciding, solving local problems with local solutions. And that’s not the overreach of a federal government or a state government, of which we are dealing with in Nashville and our cities across the state of Tennessee.

Ahem. If Behn does not want to “engage in cable-news talking points,” why is she making an appearance on cable news? It’s not as if Behn wandered into a TV studio accidentally. Behn did the interview in an attempt to rescue her special-election campaign in a congressional district that has a Cook index of R+10 and which went for Donald Trump and Marsha Blackburn last year, 60/38. 

Furthermore, Behn didn’t get ambushed by Peter Doocy at Fox News (although that would certainly be fun to watch, too), but opted to appear on M-SNOW. This wasn’t an ambush question; the panel at M-SNOW wants Behn to win, and the question was meant to give Behn an opportunity to distance herself and provide a sound bite demonstrating how much she has grown since 2020. 

Behn clearly missed it, and M-SNOW tried desperately to give her another chance:

Q: So you don’t want to clarify whether you still believe that the police should be defunded?

BEHN: Once again, I don’t remember these tweets, but I what I’m saying is that, um –

Behn doesn’t remember cheering the burning of police stations and dissolving Nashville’s police department? It was just five years ago when she tweeted those positions. People have produced those receipts, and whether or not Behn “remembers” those tweets, it’s clear that Behn made those positions public. The M-SNOW panel knows that her only hope to win that race is to contextualize them in a way that would allow her to compete in a deep-red district, but clearly, Behn is still not prepared to do so. The interviewer practically jumps out of her seat trying to rescue Behn from herself:

Q: I’m not asking if you remember, I’m asking – what is your position today? How’s that? On this issue?

BEHN: I mean, once again, I’m here to talk about my race, which is literally in nine days.

This just proves Morrissey’s Second Axiom on politics: You can lead a horse’s ass to water, but you cannot make her think. 

And this may not even be Behn’s worst moment of the campaign. Two months ago, Behn appeared on a Robertson County Democrat Party podcast, “Neighbors Helping Neighbors,” and dropped this gem. Republican oppo researchers tweeted it out last week, where Behn declares how AWFL her privilege is. Maybe she should look up Peter Doocy at some point, because it’s tough to believe she’d do worse on Fox than she does while engaging with fellow progressives.

Democrat candidate for Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District, Aftyn Behn: “I get away with a lot because I’m white.” 🤔 pic.twitter.com/aRD0rN9CT2

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 18, 2025

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