Scott Jennings Goes Off On CNN Anchor for ‘Ridiculous’ Defense of Aftyn Behn’s ‘Defund the Police’ Rhetoric

Conservative News DailyDecember 3, 2025

The article discusses Aftyn Behn’s unsuccessful bid for Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District seat as a Democrat, highlighting the controversy surrounding her past support for defunding the police-a stance she refused to disavow during the campaign. Despite some media attempts, notably by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, to downplay the significance of her previous comments by emphasizing that they were made when Behn was a private citizen and not a core part of her campaign, critics including CNN commentator Scott Jennings challenged this narrative. Jennings pointed out that politicians are accountable for their past statements regardless of when they were made, and Behn’s refusal to distance herself from those views likely contributed to her loss.Ultimately, the article portrays Behn as a candidate with radical positions whose media defenders tried to shield her, but whose voters saw through the tactic, resulting in a decisive defeat to Republican Matt Van Epps.

Aftyn Behn’s attempt to capture a congressional seat for the Democrats is finished, but her cause — and its defense by her media enablers — lives on.

This, in case you haven’t been following the special election for Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District, isn’t a good thing. Behn is and was a legitimately crazy person who’s held no shortage of rebarbative beliefs — one of them being that the police ought to be defunded.

If not trapped inside a burning precinct, that is:

Good morning to all the people who ACTUALLY respect our law enforcement officers unlike Aftyn Behn who thinks it’s okay to burn down police stations. pic.twitter.com/Eel6vFwIxF

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 29, 2025

Anyhow, in off-cycle special elections, the party that’s out of power usually overperforms thanks to a motivated base, and the Behn-Matt Van Epps race was no exception. Nevertheless, the final outcome was not particularly close — not as close as pollsters had it, anyway, with most surveys finding Behn within the margin of error. The actual vote had Van Epps winning by just under nine percentage points, 53.9 to 45.0 percent.

So, now that Behn has lost, the spotlight is off of her — and, during election night coverage, the enablers over at CNN wondered if all the negative attention placed on her past positions regarding the police had too much to do with it.

Scott Jennings, CNN’s resident conservative and envoy to reality, managed to check anchor Kaitlan Collins’ Behn apologia with this verdict:

“What a ridiculous way to just maintain a position that nobody likes.”

Collins, noting the defund the police issue, said that “those were her past comments” but that “she was a private citizen.”

“That wasn’t like a core tenet of her campaign,” Collins said to Jennings. “She talked about affordability. So, I think my question is, is do you really think every — that’s what every Democrat looks like? I mean, I don’t think that was the main — that was something that a criticism of hers, obviously, of past comments.”

Jennings noted that Behn “got asked about it repeatedly, and refused to back away from it.”

Which, fact check: True. Indeed, up until the day before the election, she refused to disavow it — on CNN, even, so it’s not like Collins wouldn’t have seen it:

Aftyn Behn continues her train wreck of a campaign to be a representative from Tennessee.

Here she’s asked about her past calls to defund the police. She refuses to talk about them.

Behn won’t even say if she supports defunding the police now.

Pathetic.pic.twitter.com/bGrC7MQWrd https://t.co/wu0LJzXyZN

— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) November 24, 2025

NEW: CNN’s Kasie Hunt gives up and moves on after far-left congressional candidate Aftyn Behn of Tennessee refused to admit that funding the police is a good thing.

Hunt: Would you like more money for more cops on the streets in your district?

Behn: So those um, past comments… pic.twitter.com/DScvVKZQYt

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) December 2, 2025

“This is what Democrats believe, and this is what their base wants. It’s why she wouldn’t go back on it,” Jennings continued, before noting the fatuity of Collins’ argument that she wasn’t a politician when she said these things.

“‘I was just a private citizen’? Oh my gosh, we’ve never held what you said as a private citizen against you in a political campaign, for goodness sakes. What a ridiculous way to just maintain a position that nobody likes.”

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins gets obliterated on air after defending “defund the police” candidate Aftyn Behn.

“She was a private citizen,” Collins argued. “That wasn’t like a core tenet of her campaign.”

Scott Jennings gave Collins a funny look and wrecked her with this statement:… pic.twitter.com/gRCjrsd326

— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) December 3, 2025

Fact check: Also true!

This is the issue with Behn’s recent conversion to more reasonable positions, usually adjacent to “affordability.” They offer a convenient way to escape whatever she’s said as an individual during the public portion of her 36 years on planet Earth. She also refused to disavow it, because if she did, it would alienate her base. So, what she did instead was rely on Kaitlan Collins and her ilk to cover for her.

Tennessee voters were smart enough to figure out that this was just an act, and responded accordingly. Let’s hope most voters realize, contra Collins, that this is precisely who Aftyn Behn and her peeps really are.