Whitmer Cries Wolf
Michigan’s governor decries Trump’s rhetoric while displaying her own call to violence on national TV.
It’s not hard to imagine Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer yukking it up with her staffers as they propped up the trendy “8645” sticker on the table next to her in preparation for a “Meet the Press” interview.
Before going live, they probably let NBC’s Chuck Todd and his producers in on the joke, too. After all, what’s a little call to violence against the president between and among Trump-haters?
On the shelf just behind Whitmer and her 8645 message was a vanity license plate with an utterly contradictory message: “RESPECT.” Respect for whom, Gretch? Certainly not for President Donald Trump or his supporters. Whitmer, with her nationally televised call to “86” our 45th president not only displayed her contempt for Trump but also for the more than two million Michigan voters who went for Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016 and put the state in the Republican column for the first time since 1988.
Whitmer is, of course, the same thin-skinned governor whose feelings were hurt a day earlier when, at a Trump campaign rally in nearby Muskegon, the president said, “You gotta get your governor to open up your state, okay? And get your schools open.”
When the crowd spontaneously broke into chants of “Lock her up,” Trump responded, “Lock ‘em all up.” To which Whitmer tweeted, “This is exactly the rhetoric that has put me, my family, and other government officials’ lives in danger while we try to save the lives of our fellow Americans. It needs to stop.”
During the interview, she continued her disingenuous attack, telling Todd, “It’s incredibly disturbing that the president of the United States, 10 days after a plot to kidnap, put me on trial, and execute me — 10 days after that was uncovered — the president is at it again and inspiring and incentivizing and inciting this kind of domestic terrorism. It is wrong. It’s got to end. It is dangerous. We do not tolerate actions like he is giving comfort to. And that’s why we all have to be in this together.”
As we’ve noted, that plot was not what it seemed.
After Whitmer’s MTP rant, the Trump War Room was quick to denounce her: “Governor Gretchen Whitmer displayed an ‘86 45’ sign during her TV appearance,” they tweeted. “86 can be shorthand for killing someone. Whitmer is encouraging assassination attempts against President Trump just weeks after someone sent a ricin-laced package to the White House.”
Republican National Committee Rapid Response Director Steve Guest went a step further, tweeting out a screenshot of Google’s definition of “86,” which included a call for “killing someone.”
Hey, what’s good for the goose is good for the governor. And once again, we find Democrats guilty of the exact same behavior they accuse Republicans of.