Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer admitted she didn’t have proof to back her claims about protests spreading COVID-19 to rural areas.
The Democratic governor was questioned about a claim she made on ABC’s The View on Wednesday in which she said the protests against her state stay-at-home order were likely contributing to the spread of the coronavirus in rural areas.
“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, they are congregating, they’re not wearing masks, they are not staying 6 feet apart, and then they go back home into communities, and the risk of perpetuating the spread of COVID-19 is real,” she said.
Hours after the appearance, a reporter asked Whitmer during a press conference, “What proof do you have to show that that’s happening?”
“I don’t have proof. I’m not following everybody home and taking their temperatures and watching them for two weeks,” the governor replied, later defending the claim by discussing the method by which the novel coronavirus spreads.
“The way that it spreads is person-to-person contact, that it can stay in the air for a while, that when you’re closer than 6 feet, not wearing masks. It is when you are touching one another. We saw a lot of that at these protests at the Capitol. And that’s how COVID-19 spreads,” she said.
During her appearance on The View, Whitmer also claimed the anti-quarantine protesters were motivated by racism and sexism.
“These have been really political rallies where people come with Confederate flags and Nazi symbolism and calling for violence,” she said. “This is not appropriate in a global pandemic, but it’s certainly not an exercise of democratic principles where we have free speech. This is calls to violence. This is racist and misogynistic.”
In late April, the Michigan legislature denied Whitmer’s request to extend the state of emergency an additional 28 days. Whitmer, however, exercised her executive emergency powers to extend the state of emergency herself against the wishes of lawmakers. The GOP-led House is currently seeking legal recourse.
