In an interview with PBS’ Firing Line that aired on Friday night, Whitmer spoke about the response she received to lockdowns following the coronavirus pandemic.
When asked if the president was egging on the protesters, Whitmer said that she “absolutely” thought Trump was egging them on by writing tweets calling to “Liberate Michigan.” She said that while she wasn’t fazed by the protesters, the president’s tweets do affect people. “I’m not going to be bullied into making decisions that are going to cost people’s lives,” she said. “But when the president eggs people on, it has an impact.”
The governor proceeded to criticize Trump for using language that led to her receiving death threats from anti-lockdown protesters, but again said that the threats did not affect her decisions in taking action to prevent COVID-19’s spread. “This rhetoric that has come out of this, consistently out of this White House has engendered a hateful environment that has emboldened people’s worst tendencies—death threats against me, you know, people putting likeness of me in a noose, for instance,” she said. “I’m not going to be dissuaded from following the best science and the best minds in medicine, because whether people voted for me or not, whether they agree with me or not, whether they’re standing out there protesting me or not, my job is to protect them, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
She also said that Trump’s tweets made it harder for her to get approval for emergency orders. “Up until then, my legislature was supporting my emergency orders,” she said. “When that happened, they wouldn’t extend an emergency order. They started taking me to court, started introducing legislation to take the powers of the governor away.”
Despite the issues she ran into following the president’s tweets, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled her state of emergency declaration constitutional on Friday. According to the Detroit Free Press, the court was looking into the governor’s actions in regards to the Emergency Powers of Governor Act. In a statement, Whitmer’s office called the ruling a win in regards to the governor’s efforts to slow the coronavirus’s spread.
While Whitmer said that the president was egging on anti-lockdown protesters, she praised Vice President Mike Pence. She called him “a decent human being” and said that he’d been helpful and responsive to her requests about COVID-19.
In the interview, Whitmer also addressed other issues currently on Americans’ minds, including mail-in voting and the upcoming election. She spoke about her being considered for former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign as his running mate, calling it an “honor.”
A press contact for Whitmer did not respond to Newsweek’s emailed request for comment in time for publication.
