‘OUTRAGEOUSNESS’

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer: Anti-Lockdown Protests ‘Depicted Some of the Worst Racism’

After a fresh round of ugly protests, the Democratic governor stood her ground: “This isn’t something we just negotiate ourselves out of.”

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said on Sunday that anti-lockdown protests in her state “depicted some of the worst racism and awful parts of our history.” Hundreds of angry demonstrators confronted lawmakers in the state Capitol building in Lansing on Thursday to protest a stay-at-home order aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus. “Some of the outrageousness of what happened at our capitol this [past] week, you know, depicted some of the worst racism and awful parts of our history in this country,” Whitmer told CNN’s State of the Union. “You know the Confederate flags and nooses, the swastikas... the behavior that you've seen in all of the clips is not representative of who we are in Michigan.” Whitmer, who extended Michigan’s state of emergency through May 28, said that “this isn’t something we just negotiate ourselves out of.”