Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) apologized Wednesday in a statement laced with sarcasm for becoming incapacitated at a college football game after consuming too much alcohol at a tailgate.
Nessel detailed that she had to leave the game early because she felt ill, saying people helped her up the stairs as she exited and that someone provided her with a wheelchair to prevent her from “stumbling into the parking lot.” She noted a designated driver brought her home, where she fell asleep and woke up the next day to a “skull-crushing hangover.”
Michigan’s top legal officer described the chain of events, which occurred at the state’s annual rivalry football game between University of Michigan and Michigan State University on October 30, as “tailgate-gate,” though it is unclear where that term originated or what prompted her to give a public apology 11 days after the incident.
“Before the big game, I attended a tailgate on an empty stomach. Much to my surprise, MSU tailgate’s tend to have more alcohol than food, so I thought it seemed like a good idea to eat 2 Bloody Mary’s, since as long as you put enough vegetables in them, it’s practically a salad,” Nessel, a University of Michigan alum, wrote in a Facebook post. “As it turned out, this was not a brilliant idea. Also, I might be a terrible bartender.”
Nessel continued, “I proceeded to go to the game (which I’m told Michigan definitely won!) and started to feel ill. I laid low for a while, but my friends recommended that I leave so as to prevent me from vomiting on any of my constituents (polling consistently shows ‘Roman showers’ to be unpopular among most demographics).”
The attorney general attached a photo of herself to her Facebook post “just so one doesn’t have to imagine what this scene might have looked like”:
Nessel noted in the statement that she would have consulted her “trusted friend and communications savant Kelly Rossman-McKinney for advice on how to best handle this crisis, but she died last night, so I can’t.”
Rossman-McKinney died Tuesday after a battle with cancer, according to the Detroit Free Press, which noted she was a “trailblazer in Michigan’s public relations industry” and that her career spanned four decades.
Concluding her statement with an apology, Nessel wrote, “I am human. Sometimes I screw up. This was definitely one of those times. My apologies to the entire state of Michigan for this mishap, but especially that Michigan fan sitting behind me. Some things you can’t un-see.” She added, “Sorry to all the people who have supported me for letting you down. I will try to do better.”
Tori Sachs, executive director of the conservative Michigan Freedom Fund, condemned Nessel for being “out of control for years,” writing that “the issue isn’t that she got embarrassingly drunk at our state’s most-watched public event, it’s that she is completely erratic, irrational, and lacks judgment”:
Michigan Rising Action, another conservative group, lambasted Nessel for her judgment calls at the game and assessed that her actions are a “stain on Michigan’s reputation.” The group said the delay of Nessel’s apology suggests she is not “genuinely sorry” but rather “just sorry she got caught.”
“When you are elected to be the top law enforcement official in the state, you are held to a higher standard,” the group’s executive director, Eric Ventimiglia, said. “People drink at tailgates, and that is perfectly acceptable behavior. It is an embarrassment to the State of Michigan for our top prosecutor to have been drunkenly carted out of a stadium. It is unbecoming of her office.”
Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com.
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