Gretchen Whitmer Didn't Need To Hand It To Donald Trump

How to lose a political career in 10 minutes

There’s a depressing image circulating of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer at the White House. She looks so uncomfortable and miserable, you can hear Paul Simon singing, “Hello darkness, my old friend.”

So, first we need to ask why Whitmer was even at the White House. Did she think Donald Trump was at Mar-a-Lago and took her kids for quick tour while he was gone? No, it seems she willingly met with the convicted felon who raised lynch mobs against her during his 2020 campaign rallies. She’d joined Republican state House Speaker Matt Hall to discuss some critical Michigan issues with Trump, but the scheduled private meeting on Wednesday instead became a public press conference. Politically for Whitmer, it was very much like that scene in Goodfellas when Tommy enters an empty room and realizes he’s not getting made. (Watch below.)

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“The governor was surprised that she was brought into the Oval Office during President Trump’s press conference without any notice of the subject matter,” a Whitmer spokesperson later claimed. “Her presence is not an endorsement of the actions taken or statements made at that event.”

So, Whitmer got chumped. She stood around as Hall claimed former President Joe Biden had ignored the issues Trump was now helping resolve, including Selfridge Air National Guard Base and the invasive Asian carp.

“I want to thank you for caring so much about Michigan,” Hall said. “We couldn't get Joe Biden to do anything about either one of these issues, particularly Selfridge Air Force Base. It’ll be critical to Michigan’s economy and our security.

“But on the Asian carp, you know, for years, when [Barack] Obama was there, we could never get anyone to do anything about this, this invasive species that's going to destroy our Great Lakes.”

This is, of course, a lie. The Obama administration invested more than $100 million dollars to protect the Great Lakes from Asian carp and formed an Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee in 2009. The Biden administration signed an agreement with Illinois and Michigan in July 2024 — just last year! — that would launch a $1 billion project to help prevent invasive carp from entering the Great Lakes. These funds were part of the bipartisan infrastructure deal that Biden signed into law.

Whitmer didn’t defend Biden and Obama from these smears. Perhaps that’s why Trump briefly complimented her: “She’s really done an excellent job. Very good person.” She served her purpose as a bipartisan prop for this corrupt administration. However, that wasn’t the extent of her humiliation. She was present as Trump signed several of his fascist executive orders, including two calling for sham Justice Department investigations of former White House officials Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor. Trump declared once again that the 2020 election was “rigged” and “stolen” (Whitmer was the governor when Trump tried to steal Michigan’s electoral votes.)

Trump’s perverse zero-sum world view is obvious to anyone who’s paid the least bit of attention, and Whitmer should’ve realized Trump only scheduled a meeting with her so he could publicly assert his dominance.

Whitmer’s defenders argue that she had no choice but to meet with Trump. I hate deterministic politics. There is always a choice. Ukraine is under invasion from more than just gross fish, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy nonetheless stood up to Trump and his VP henchman JD Vance. He didn’t let their outright lies go unchallenged.

There is no situation where Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, or former South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem would’ve even met with President Kamala Harris, let alone allow themselves to be used for a photo op.

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Of course, the reflexive response is that Harris isn’t a deranged psychopath like Trump who’d require that governors kiss her ring before she helped people in their states. However, as impossible as it seems at times, Trump is the president of the United States. Democratic governors can ensure he delivers the bare minimum without surrendering their dignity to him, and if he doesn’t, they can hold him accountable. Far too many Democrats have absorbed a “MAGA will kill the hostages so we must give in to their demands” mentality.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney resembles a kindly elementary school principal, yet he’s taken a far more aggressive stance against Trump than many Democratic politicians. Carney has drawn a clear line regarding what is necessary to resume “normal” relations with the U.S. under Trump’s rule. Democratic governors like Whitmer arguably have more leverage, not less, to resist Trump.

And it gets worse …

The good news for Gov. Whitmer is that the White House photo op disaster took some attention from her speech on Wednesday where she appeared supportive of Trump’s position on tariffs.

“Here’s my pitch: Let’s keep going,” Whitmer said, as American democracy sinks like the Titanic. “Let’s make more ships, planes and semiconductor chips in America. Let’s cut red tape and unleash the extraordinary potential of American industry. Let’s give more hard-working people a fair shot at a decent life. And let’s usher in, as President Trump says, a ‘Golden Age’ of American manufacturing.”

Trump’s trade war has only ushered in a Pyrite Age of Poverty. Whitmer did criticize Trump’s reckless tariffs for their negative impact on Americans who’d like to retire within the next 100 years, but she didn’t directly condemn the mad man responsible. She didn’t even outright say “Trump Tariffs Bad.” Instead, she acted like she had some obligation to say something nice, as if Trump’s tariffs were her kid’s talent show performance.

“I understand the motivation behind the tariffs, and I can tell you here’s where President Trump and I do agree,” she continued. “We do need to make more stuff in America — more cars and chips, more steel and ships. We do need fair trade.”

I don’t know where to begin. Trump’s motivation behind his insane trade war is one of ignorant, petty vengeance, an irrational belief that our global trading partners are playing the U.S. for a sucker. Even Rand Paul understands this! I assume Whitmer doesn’t share Trump’s paranoid delusions, so she’s wrongly crediting him as a good-faith actor. That’s always a mistake.

Look, I’m old enough to recall the big “made in USA” campaign during the 1980s. (Watch below.)

However, tariffs won’t make America 1955 again, because they’re tariffs not a time machine. All tariffs will do is raise prices on everything without simultaneously raising wages. In these imagined “good old days,” unions were able to negotiate decent salaries for Rust Belt factory workers. Maybe you could bring back major industrial jobs through protectionism, but the compensation model will more closely resemble Amazon warehouses. Without the worker protections and benefits that Republicans actively oppose, it won’t matter if we “make more stuff in America,” income inequality will continue to expand.

Whitmer also complained against “partisanship,” claiming it’s “infected every aspect of our lives, driven by opportunistic politicians, cynical media figures, and addictive algorithms.” Republicans are the opportunistic politicians. Rachel Maddow isn’t one of the “cynical media figures.” That’s Fox News, and the social media “algorithms” are pushing right-wing disinformation. Democratic leaders should clearly identify the problem rather than promote counter-productive “both-sides” narratives. If Coca-Cola started killing people, Pepsi executives aren’t going to issue generic messages about “concerning issues in the soda industry.”

I’ve seen it argued that Whitmer is repackaging herself as a sensible “bipartisan” moderate after Trump’s second win in Michigan. You’ll recall that Biden won Georgia in 2020 and Democrats swept the 2021 Senate runoffs, but Republican Gov. Brian Kemp didn’t start listing points where he agreed with Biden.

Democrats often complain that voters and the media seemingly never hold Republicans accountable for their actions, only Democrats. This has reached a level of self-defeating nihilism. Democrats will step off an obvious political cliff and their defenders will insist that people would’ve criticized them if they’d remained on solid ground. However, the average person respects someone who’ll take a punch if it means standing up for what’s right.