Michigan Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Thursday accused President Donald Trump of deliberately stoking division as her state battles crippling COVID-19 related unemployment and catastrophic flooding — calling his threat to withhold federal money “scary.”
With more than 5,000 COVID deaths, some 1.7 million unemployed — about a third of the state’s workforce — and massive flooding sparked by the failure of two dams, Whitmer said she urged Trump to focus on the “true enemy.”
“To have this kind of distraction is just ridiculous to be honest. … Threatening to take money away from a state that is hurting as bad as we are right now is just scary, and I think something that is unacceptable," she said on "CBS This Morning."
She said she told Trump in a call Wednesday, "Let's try to focus on the true enemy, which is the virus and the natural disaster."
Her office says she wasn’t invited to join Trump's visit to the Ford Motor Co. Rawsonville Components Plant in Ypsilanti on Thursday.
The Trump tweet threat was sparked by Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson drew the president's ire after the state mailed out absentee voting applications, CBS News reported. Trump incorrectly claiming the Michigan State Department sent out the ballots themselves.
Whitmer said she hopes on his state visit "he will see we are hard-working, good Americans" who need their federal government's support "as much as anybody else, if not more right now because of this added challenge."
"I'm hopeful that he comes away knowing that's what's most important," she said. "We've got to be focused on doing the right thing right now on behalf of the people."
The governor said she was grateful for FEMA's help through the flooding disaster after the failure of two dams — one of which was reportedly called out for safety issues in the past.
After his Wednesday tweet, Trump backed off the threat but continued to claim there's "tremendous fraud" and "tremendous illegality" involving mail ballots.
Joe Biden criticized Trump's handling of Michigan's challenges.
"In times of crisis, leaders don't drag their feet and they don't politicize — they spring to action to secure needed relief," the former vice president said in a statement. "But in the wake of disaster, Donald Trump once again showed us who he is — threatening to pull federal funding and encouraging division."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.