Governor Gretchen Whitmer Admits She Has No Proof That Lockdown Protesters Are Spreading COVID-19 To Rural Areas

By LifeZette

·Updated: May 14, 2020

Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer confessed on Wednesday that she has no proof that those protesting her strict lockdown measures are spreading coronavirus to rural areas of her state.

This came hours after Governor Whitmer expressed this concern in a phone call to Vice President Mike Pence in which she asked him to discourage such protests, which have become common in Michigan.

“What we have seen from initial protests here is that we’ve got COVID-19 spreading in rural parts of our state, from which people traveled,” Whitmer reportedly told the vice president, according to The Daily Caller.

Gov. Whitmer asked VP Pence to consider discouraging protests. Per audio, she expressed concern about COVID-19 spread b/c of them: “But what we have seen from initial protests here is that we’ve got COVID-19 spreading in rural parts of our state, from which people traveled.”

— Katherine Faulders (@KFaulders) May 11, 2020

While appearing on “The View” later on Wednesday, Whitmer described the protests as “political statements” that increase the “risk of perpetuating the spread” of the virus. “These protests, they do undermine the effort, and it’s very clearly a political statement that is playing out where people are coming together from across the state,” she said. “They are congregating, they’re not wearing masks, they are not staying six feet apart and then they go back home into communities and the risk of perpetuating the spread of COVID-19 is real.”

However, Whitmer went on to admit during a press conference on Wednesday afternoon that she did not actually have any proof to back these assertions up. “I don’t have proof,” Whitmer said, according to WSJM-TV. “I’m not following everyone home and taking their temperatures and watching their lives for two weeks, but here’s what we know, when it comes to COVID-19, the way that it spreads is person-to-person contact.

“It can stay in the air for a while,” she added. “It is when you’re touching one another, and we saw a lot of that at these protests at the Capitol.”

Whitmer went on to claim to have seen a report from a group that has tracked cellphone data from the protests that correlates to “hot spots in rural parts of Michigan,” but she made sure to quickly add a disclaimer. “I don’t know the group; I’ve not vetted the data; I can’t vouch for it, but I think that would not be a surprising outcome if that were the case,” she said. Nice try, Governor Whitmer, but we’re not buying what you’re selling, and it does not seem like anyone else is either.

This piece was written by PoliZette Staff on May 14, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.