Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer said the attacks during her trip to Florida last month were “distressing” when she visited her father.
“It’s sad,” Whitmer told The Washington Post Live. ‘It’s a two-day trip. I wasn’t partying in Miami. ‘ She characterized the trip as a ‘check-in’ from her father who is suffering from an illness. “It certainly wasn’t spring break.”
Michigan has had the worst COVID-19 positivity rates in the country in recent weeks, and Whitmer has blamed spring break travelers heading to Florida. Whitmer urged people returning from the Sunshine State to work from home for a week or to let their children learn remotely for a week.
Tiffany Brown, a Whitmer spokesman, said the trip was not at the expense of taxpayers and that the governor was not long gone, according to the report. She pointed out that the governor is being regularly tested for the virus and her father is being vaccinated.
Michigan has been dealing with the worst COVID-19 positivity rates in the nation in recent weeks, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has blamed spring break travelers going to Florida. (AP Photo / John Flesher)
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“The governor didn’t go on spring break and she hasn’t left the state for over a month,” Brown said in a statement. “In the past six months, she has left the state three times, once for inauguration, once to help her elderly father suffering from a chronic illness, and once to visit Michigan National Guard troops. “
Republicans in the state wasted little time grabbing the report.
Ted Goodman, the communications director for the state Republican Party, told FOX 2 Detroit that Whitmer’s “blatant display of hypocrisy is an insult to any Michigander affected by her lockdown orders and travel warnings.”
Not only did Whitmer and her top staff go on vacation to Florida, but they tried to keep it a secret because to Whitmer it’s, ‘Rules for you, but not for me,’ Goodman said.
Tricia Foster, the governor’s chief operating officer, posted photos to Facebook from her vacation in Siesta Key earlier this month.
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“This is a partisan attack by a garbage-white nationalist website,” spokesman Bobby Leddy said in a statement at the time. “Trish Foster has fully recovered from COVID and is fully vaccinated.”
Whitmer’s newly appointed health director traveled to Alabama earlier in April, shortly after the governor discouraged residents from traveling while Michigan led the nation in new coronavirus cases.
Elizabeth Hertel, director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, was in Gulf Shores, Alabama, according to the Michigan Information & Research Service. Gulf Shores is a popular vacation spot along the Gulf of Mexico.
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Whitmer told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that cases could start to slow down in her state. Health officials said Friday that the seven-day mean positivity rate had fallen to 17.1% in recent days, but remained above the December peak of 14.4%.
Fox News’ Edmund DeMarche contributed to this report.