CLICK TO LISTEN TO GOVERNOR TUESDAY AFTERNOON COMMENTS
Governor Gretchen Whitmer on Tuesday addressed the controversy surrounding reports that her husband, Mark, tried to use his position as the governor’s husband to get his northern Michigan boat in the water before other people ahead of the holiday weekend.
The governor also vowed to stay the course of a slow loosening of restrictions, saying that she won’t be bullied into loosening then sooner.
As for the boat dock controversy, which drew national and international headlines over the holiday weekend, Whitmer says her husband was only joking about asking for special treatment, and regrets it.
“It was a failed attempt at humor, given the prohibition we had on motorized boating in the early days of COVID-19,” Whitmer said. “He thought it would get a laugh. It didn’t. Frankly, I wasn’t laughing either.”
Whitmer added that it is legal to go between residences, and her husband did come up north to stay a night or two and to rake leaves. She stayed in Lansing.
She became emotional, as well, when talking about the threats of violence against her and her family. Whitmer said that she has had armed men standing in view of her living room window, and she and her family members have seen the vile things written about her on-line.
“My neighbors in Antrim County were terrorized over the holiday weekend even though I was 200 miles away,” Whitmer said.
The governor added that protests, lawsuits, and politics will not change the course that she’s on, which has been to move cautiously into phases of re-opening.
Whitmer implemented many of her orders in mid-to-late March, and has extended them multiple times since, with the latest one going into mid-June. The orders were initially designed to prevent the health care system from collapsing under the weight of massive spikes of infections.
Whitmer says that now that coronavirus cases are dropping and we’ve flattened the curve, restrictions are still needed to avoid a second wave of infections later this year.
“It will be a long time before we have vaccines, or herd immunity, or a cure,” Whitmer said. “That means that we have to learn to live with this virus for the time being. That means masks. That means distancing, That means hand washing. I’m not going to be bullied into ignoring the science and making political calculations. And as we’ve seen across the country, let’s not us here in Michigan having made this sacrifice in vein, and see our numbers rise again.”
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