Michigan Senate Candidate Defends Her Deleted Posts After CNN Report: ‘People Are Desperate for Authenticity’

Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, a candidate in the state’s competitive Democratic U.S. Senate primary, defended herself Sunday after a CNN investigation revealed she had deleted roughly 6,000 old social media posts, including comments criticizing the rural Midwest and praising California. “I tweeted normal things like a normal person,” McMorrow told CNN’s Manu Raju on “Inside Politics Sunday.” “People are desperate for authenticity, so that is what we need in November.”

The deleted posts, resurfaced by CNN’s KFile, reflect a range of views—from support of the Black Lives Matter movement to comparing President Donald Trump and his supporters to Nazis. In January 2017, when a user wrote that “California should have its own diplomats” to avoid being “nuked because of morons from the other side of the country,” McMorrow responded, “There are days like these that make me miss California even more.”

McMorrow has since branded herself as the pragmatist in the crowded Michigan race. She stood by her past posts, saying, “Trump has succeeded in weaponizing us against each other, convincing us that we are each other’s enemies. I’ve lived all over the country. I’ve met a lot of different people, and I stand by that.” She added, “Was it the most eloquent tweet I’ve ever tweeted? No, I’ve tweeted thousands of times.”

The Michigan Democrat, who has said she would not back Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to lead the caucus, said voters are “responding” to her call for “new leadership in the Democratic Party.” She pointed to Maine, where Democratic leaders’ handpicked candidate, Gov. Janet Mills, dropped out of the Senate race last week. “We just saw what happened in Maine,” McMorrow said. “I think the bigger liability is somebody who’s been so concerned that one day they might run for office that everything about them is manufactured.”

Rep. Haley Stevens, another candidate in the race favored by some establishment Democrats, told Raju she thinks McMorrow’s posts were “a little tacky” and “very out of touch with what our state is all about.” Stevens warned they could be a liability in a general election against former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, who narrowly lost in 2024. “Why litigate that in a general election when we know we’re in a swing state?” Stevens said.

McMorrow said she did not delete the posts because they were a political liability, but rather as part of “a decision to delete everything to 2021.” She also addressed a post declaring “cars are dead,” explaining it was part of a conversation with automotive journalists about “a dark future where there are no cars.” She did not back down from past comparisons of the Trump administration to Nazi Germany, saying, “It is deeply concerning that we see an authoritarian slide.”

Pressed on the discrepancy between her claim in a recent book that she “permanently relocated” to Michigan from California in 2014 and her own deleted posts suggesting she still lived and voted in California as late as June 2016, McMorrow said she and her husband decided to move in 2014, but “like a lot of millennials, moving takes time.” She did not change her voter registration until later in 2016.