Gretchen Whitmer Warns That Donald Trump Is Inciting 'Domestic Terrorism' at His Rallies
Politics
Even after it was revealed that a group of far-right extremists had plotted to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer and put her on trial for “tyranny,” Donald Trump continues to spout the same dangerous rhetoric about Michigan’s governor that arguably put a target on her back in the first place.
At a re-election campaign stop in Whitmer’s state on Saturday, Donald Trump once again criticized the Democratic governor for how she has responded to covid-19, CNN reports. Not coincidentally, Whitmer has been an extremely vocal critic of how the Trump administration has handled the coronavirus pandemic since as far back as March.
Following the Republican president’s criticism of Whitmer, the crowd began chanting “Lock her up!”—the same chant Trump supporters have used to against a number of Democratic women who’ve gone head-to-head with the president, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, and 2016 presidential rival Hillary Clinton, whom Trump has said should be jailed as recently as Friday, per The Hill.
In an interview with Chuck Todd of NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Whitmer said that she found the whole spectacle “incredibly disturbing,” given the terrifying violence that nearly befell her.
“It’s incredibly disturbing that…10 days after [a] plot to kidnap, put me on trial, and execute me…was uncovered, the president is at it again, inspiring and incentivizing and inciting this kind of domestic terrorism,” the governor said. “It is wrong. It’s got to end. It is dangerous, not just for me and my family but for public servants everywhere who are doing their jobs and trying to protect their fellow Americans.”
“People of goodwill on both sides of the aisle need to step up and call this out,” she continued. “We all have to be in this together.”
Unsurprisingly, Trump campaign adviser and daughter-in-law Lara Trump dismissed Whitmer’s concerns during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, claiming that the president was simply “having fun.”