Life may not be a beach for an aide to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer who traveled to Florida as COVID-19 surged in Michigan.
On Friday, Tricia Foster, the governor’s chief operating officer, posted pictures to her Facebook page that appeared to show the aide, her teenage daughter, and the daughter’s friends on the beach accompanied with the caption: “A good day.” When one friend commented asking whether she was in Siesta Key, Foster appeared to confirm she was, saying the friend “likely” saw her there, according to multiple outlets. Foster deleted the post after Breitbart first broke the news.
Bobby Leddy, Whitmer’s press secretary, dismissed the Breitbart story as “a partisan attack from a garbage white nationalist website” in an email to Newsweek, adding that Foster “is fully recovered from COVID and fully vaccinated” and citing guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention saying that fully vaccinated people can travel domestically.
ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION DEFIES WHITMER’S REQUEST FOR TWO-WEEK PAUSE TO YOUTH SPORTS
The reported vacation follows a surge of coronavirus cases in Michigan, reportedly driven by the U.K. variant, that caused the governor to tighten restrictions and call on residents to reduce travel. On April 2, Whitmer released guidelines urging spring breakers to get tested for COVID-19 upon returning to Michigan.
“Michiganders should get tested one to three days before travel,” Elizabeth Hertel, the director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, said. “Do not travel if you test positive. Check travel restrictions before leaving, especially information about the spread of new variants of COVID-19 where you intend on visiting.”
On Friday, the governor asked schools to enact a voluntary two-week pause for all high school sports to curb the virus’s transmission, a request that was denied by the Michigan High School Athletic Association.
“We’re going to play two days of basketball and really make no changes for the spring,” Michigan High School Athletic Association Executive Director Mark Uyl said. “We followed the orders, every order, going back to July. Whenever the orders have allowed us to play, we’ve played.”
Whitmer has similarly attracted controversy for traveling while urging residents to stay home. On Jan. 20, she traveled to Washington, D.C., to celebrate President Joe Biden’s inauguration despite “encouraging people not to travel for Christmas and start figuring out how to use Zoom to stay close” one month prior. Tiffany Brown, a spokeswoman for Whitmer, said the governor would obey all CDC guidelines during her visit to Washington.
Last May, Whitmer’s husband, Marc Mallory, was accused of attempting to use his standing as the governor’s husband to try and get his boat put in the water before Memorial Day in defiance of COVID-19 restrictions in place at the time. Brown declined to address the allegation at the time, saying she would not “make it a practice of addressing every rumor that is spread online.”
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Michigan has had 812,865 cases of COVID-19, and 17,479 statewide deaths have been attributed to the disease, according to the Johns Hopkins University coronavirus tracker.
A representative for Whitmer did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment.
