Seattle’s socialist Mayor Katie Wilson is facing renewed backlash after abruptly cutting short an interview when pressed on a basic public safety question.
The two-minute video has amassed nearly 1 million views on X and sparked fierce criticism of the newly installed mayor.
Wilson awkwardly exited the interview with Seattle’s TV station KOMO after being asked about the role of surveillance cameras amid rising gun violence in the city.
“That’s obviously been an issue that you weighed in on. Does that change it? Does that change your perspective at all?” the reporter asked.
As the question was posed, the mayor began to break eye contact and glance at what appeared to be her press staffers off camera, who can be heard telling the reporter to “keep it on topic.”
SEATTLE MAYOR INTERVIEW CUT SHORT AS STAFF BLOCKS QUESTIONS ON GUN VIOLENCE, SURVEILLANCE
“Let’s keep it on the topic,” the mayor reiterated.
The reporter repeated the question, seeking an answer from the socialist mayor on an issue of concern to residents.
“But does that change your perspective at all on the issue of surveillance cameras based on what you went through on Tuesday?” the reporter pressed.
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“So we,” Wilson said, beginning to answer the question before being pulled away by her press handler.
“Your job is to ask questions, it’s our job to figure out which questions we want to answer,” another Wilson staffer said.
One user on X wrote that the reaction from her mayor and staff meant, “Please don’t ask on anything else because I will look bad. “Can’t have a socialist look bad because they can’t answer simple questions. Don’t want socialism be exposed for what it is and it has never and will never work.”
Another user said: “This KOMO reporter is not pressuring Mayor Wilson or asking any threatening questions. Just very basic stuff. But she refuses to answer. I know I’m biased…but she really appears to be in way over her head here. Objectively so.”
KOMO reported that Mayor Wilson later returned to the reporter and answered the question she initially dodged.
“I believe that CCTV cameras have an important role to play in our public safety system,” she said in the follow-up interview. “We also have to be very careful to make sure that our data storage, security, sharing practices don’t make that system vulnerable to misuse and abuse whether that’s by federal immigration enforcement or by other bad actors.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to the Seattle mayor’s office for comment.
