Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow said she continued to “stand by” a now-deleted X post where she agreed rural Americans have a “backwards” view of the country — and found a way to throw some blame at President Donald Trump while she was at it.

CNN’s Manu Raju pressed McMorrow on the 2016 post during an interview on his program on Sunday. McMorrow is in a tight race in her her state’s Democratic Senate primary, where she is battling Abdul El-Sayed — who recently told Raju he believes Israel is just as “evil” as Hamas. 

He asked her about a post she re-shared that said “all of this talk about coastal elites needing to understand more of America has it backwards.” The same user went on to write several more posts she endorsed, including one that said “many rural Americans have isolated themselves from the rest of the country. They live in very unrepresentative areas.”

McMorrow completely backed the posts, saying “This thread. I’m from rural New Jersey, this rings 100% true. Empathy should go both ways, but Trump’s base fears what they’ve never seen.” Her post was made a week after Trump beat Hillary Clinton (D) in the ’16 election,

After reading her post, Raju asked “So do you stand by that sentiment that rural parts of America can learn from coastal elites?”

“I think we all need to understand each other better,” McMorrow answered.”Trump has succeeded in weaponizing us against each other, convincing us that we are each other’s enemies.”

She continued, “I’ve lived all over the country. I’ve met a lot of different people, and I stand by that. Was it the most eloquent tweet I’ve ever tweeted? No. I’ve tweeted thousands of times, there is a level of authenticity and just grappling in the wake of the 2016 election of how somebody like Donald Trump could have been elected. And what I know is we are not each other’s enemies, and we need to understand each other better.”

Raju followed up, saying “it sounds like you did have some disdain for some parts of America that voted for Trump.”

“I don’t,” McMorrow responded. “Was it the most eloquent thing I’ve ever written? Absolutely not. But I would argue most people are not particularly elegant on Twitter or Facebook.”

The post Raju brought up was one of thousands that CNN’s K File found McMorrow deleted.

Watch above via CNN.

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