Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) falsely smeared Breitbart News as a “white nationalist website” recently, a lazy liberal trope employed to dismiss its reporting.
During the April 12 edition of the MIRS Monday podcast, Whitmer was asked, “Have you had any days off?” She was also asked where she would have gone for spring break.
“It seems like you’ve been on for an entire year,” host Kyle Melinn said.
Whitmer claimed, “My daughter had spring break. We didn’t do much of anything. You saw me. I was in town the whole time.”
This week, it was reported Whitmer herself took a “personal trip” to Florida “about a month ago.”
Whitmer’s communications director, Tiffany Brown, said the governor wasn’t on “spring break” but was assisting “her elderly father, who is battling a chronic illness.”
“It is maddening,” Whitmer said. “It is a two-day trip. I wasn’t partying in Miami.”
Whitmer was asked about Breitbart News’s exclusive reporting that her chief operating officer, Tricia Foster, had traveled to Florida for spring break with a group of teenagers, despite the governor’s orders for Michiganders not to do so.
“Were you okay with your folks going out to Florida?” Whitmer was asked.
“Most people in my administration have not taken a day off in 14 months and we’ve never had any travel restrictions in Michigan,” she claimed, a statement that was quickly disproven.
After saying Foster was “fully vaccinated,” Whitmer added, “There’s not much more to say about this kind of partisan hit job on one of my staff people from a white nationalist website.”
That was the same false smear Whitmer’s press secretary, Bobby Leddy, used against Breitbart News when he lashed out to the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, labeling it a “garbage white nationalist website.”
Breitbart News routinely ranks among the top news sites in America, according to Amazon-owned Alexa, and the false “white nationalist” smear was debunked years ago by a Harvard/MIT study cited in a 2017 profile of Breitbart News in the New York Times magazine.
Whitmer’s smear corresponded with a series of critical stories triggered in part by her deceit but also by a widespread perception that her coronavirus lockdown strategy was failing as cases rose at national record rates.
Whitmer attempted to downplay Breitbart News’s reporting, but in reality, it set the local and national media off to find additional examples highlighting what Republicans referred to as Whitmer’s “hypocrisy,” ultimately catching the governor herself.
Just days later, MIRS News reported Elizabeth Hertel, Whitmer’s director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, traveled to Alabama for her own spring break beach vacation.
Whitmer bristled when a reporter asked her for her reaction specifically to the Hertel news.
“I’m not gonna get distracted by partisan hit jobs on my team,” she said.
“What we have done is ask people to be smart, to get vaccinated, to mask up — that is the key to traveling with confidence that you’re going to be safe and not expose yourself or your loved ones to (coronavirus) or your community to (the coronavirus),” she said.
“What directors do on their personal time is their business, so long as they are safe,” Whitmer claimed.
Kyle Olson is a reporter for Breitbart News. He is also host of “The Kyle Olson Show,” syndicated on Michigan radio stations on Saturdays–download full podcast episodes. Follow him on Parler.
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