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March 29, 2020

Michigan’s governor is fighting a losing battle with President Trump

By Andrea Widburg

Before President Trump’s State of the Union address in February, most Americans outside of Michigan had never heard of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. When she gave the Democrat response to Trump’s tour de force, she impinged ever so slightly on the popular consciousness before lapsing back into obscurity.

Now, perhaps because she’s hoping to be the token woman Groping Joe Biden names as his Vice President, Whitmer is back in the media. It’s doubtful, though, that Americans will be impressed with a woman who has such a vendetta against the President that she’s willing to withhold life-saving medicine and to lie.

Ever since Trump stated his hope that hydroxychloroquine (and a similar drug, chloroquine), when prescribed with azithromycin, could treat coronavirus, the Democrat establishment has been hostile to the drug. Although chloroquine is an old and well-known drug, Nevada's governor limited its use to the hospital setting only. Whitmer has gone further than that.

Whitmer’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs informed all Michigan physicians that they could face “professional consequences” for prescribing chloroquine for any off-label purpose, rather than for the FDA-approved purposes of treating malaria and arthritis. It's important to understand that off-label use is a common practice and completely legal. Whitmer, however, went so far as to add a dose of East German spying by telling physicians that they must report to the Department of Licensing any information they have about other physicians using off-label chloroquine prescriptions.

The directive wasn’t limited to physicians. The same official notice informed pharmacists that they cannot fill any off-label prescriptions.

It’s hard to think of a reason other than Trump-hatred for this kind of directive. On the one hand, we have a disease that has stopped the world in its tracks and a known, reputable drug that might treat it. And on the other hand, we have a governor who tells physicians and pharmacists that they could lose their licenses if they give it to patients in need. There’s something very wrong about that.

And then there’s Whitmer’s lie about medical supplies. Trump arguably goaded Whitmer into lying when he criticized how she handled the coronavirus problem in Michigan. This criticism was not unreasonable, given both Whitmer’s bizarre directive about hydroxychloroquine and her complaints that the federal government wasn’t helping her enough.

Whitmer fired back by making the unsubstantiated claim that the Trump administration was deliberately withholding supplies from Michigan:

"When the federal government told us that we needed to go it ourselves, we started procuring every item we could get our hands on," Whitmer said Friday on WWJ 950AM. "What I've gotten back is that vendors with whom we had contracts are now being told not to send stuff here to Michigan."

Whitmer didn't say who has told vendors to stop sending medical supplies to the state, but strongly implied the order came from President Donald Trump's administration.

The governor's office could not provide any additional information Friday afternoon substantiating Whitmer's allegation.

Unfortunately for Whitmer, her paranoid statement was almost instantly proved false. On Saturday, Whitmer herself tweeted out that the federal government had, in fact, sent massive numbers of masks to her state – masks that clearly were en route when she accused the Trump administration of holding out on her state:

Whitmer finished her very bad week by sending out a singularly tone-deaf tweet:

With someone as seemingly inept as Whitmer in the Michigan governor’s office, our advice is that Michigan citizens shouldn’t lock arms with anybody in their state but should, instead, practice extreme social distancing to stay safe.

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