At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments issued numerous public health mandates.
Governors in Blue states were both blasted and praised for the draconian measures they put in place.
But Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer just made a surprising admission about her state’s response to the pandemic.
Whitmer says her rules did not “make a lot of sense”
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer was well known during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic for her strict lockdown measures and public health mandates. Whitmer was proud of her state’s response, and when asked about it on the 2022 campaign trail, she said she would do it all again.
But now Whitmer seems to be changing her tune about the choices she made in the name of protecting public health. Whitmer sat down with Chris Wallace for an interview on CNN to discuss her state’s rigid policies.
“There were moments where, you know, we had to make some decisions that in retrospect don’t make a lot of sense, right?” the Governor asked Wallace rhetorically.
It seems that Whitmer is finally in a position to admit where she went wrong.
She knows that her rules were “a little” harsh for the people
The Whitmer administration made a lot of rules that frustrated Michiganders and caused a lot of dissent in her state. Even the Governor knows that some of her policies were “a little” harsh.
“If you went to the hardware store, you could go to the hardware store, but we didn’t want people to be congregating around garden supplies,” she said in her interview. That led people to claim that the state of Michigan “outlawed seeds.”
She went on to suggest that this rule was only in effect during the month of February and that most people were not planting during that time. Whitmer said she knows “some of those policies” in retrospect were a “little more than what we needed to do.”
However, the rule against purchasing gardening items was not put into effect in February.
Growing food was deemed “not necessary” for living
In April of 2020, the Whitmer administration issued the guidance that banned the sale of items “not necessary to sustain or protect life.” These rules allowed for the sale of items like alcohol and tobacco but prohibited items sold in the gardening sections of hardware stores.
The rule was subjected to intense backlash and one group called it an “unconstitutional prohibition” that was designed to restrict “the rights of the many Michigan families who seek to grow their own food.”
They argued that Whitmer’s executive order was correct to recognize “food and agriculture” as “critical infrastructure,” but criticized the ban on “plants including vegetable, fruit, and herb[s].”
Advocacy group told Whitmer 3 years ago her rules do not “make sense”
The group said that “the differential treatment-permitting grocery stores to sell vegetables, fruits, and herbs, but prohibiting nurseries and garden centers from selling plants…does not make sense.”
Whitmer’s office eventually saw the hypocrisy in the rule and moved to rescind it. It would appear that now the Governor is trying to make amends for these decisions that left her people angry.
The rule banning plants was of course just one of many major overreaches by the Whitmer administration and other Democrat leaders in 2020.
Patriot Political will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
