Thursday on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) said the Michigan protesters at the state capitol in Lansing, MI on Wednesday who opposed the stay-at-home order she issued in response to the coronavirus pandemic are being irresponsible by likely “spreading COVID-19.”
Whitmer said, “So we have taken an aggressive stay-at-home order stance similar to a lot of other states, Republican-led and Democratic-led. It is not a partisan issue. COVID does not respect party lines or state lines, and that’s why we have to be in it together. And the curve looks like it is flattening. We’re pushing the curve down. That means we’re saving lives. That means we’ve saved our health care system from being completely overrun and inundated. That means fewer people are getting sick. It comes with a sacrifice. There is no question. All people are making a sacrifice right now.”
She continued, “But I think the thing that I’m most concerned most about and I think my fellow governors are as well is a resurgence. When you see a political rally, that’s what it was yesterday, a political rally like that where people are not wearing masks, and they are in close quarters, and they are touching one another, you know that that’s precisely what makes this kind of a disease drag out and expose more people.”
She added, “People can converge together in Lansing, and then they went back out to their homes across the state of Michigan. You know, the odds are very high that that’s, they’re spreading COVID-19 along with it. And so it’s that kind of irresponsible action that puts us in this situation where we might have to actually think about extending stay-at-home orders, which is supposedly what they were protesting.”
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