‘The Woman From Michigan’

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Welcome to The Ticket.

I'm Isaac DeVer, joining you again from home.

Life in 2020 is very different than we all expected, and the presidential race is no exception.

I thought I'd be chasing candidates around the country, and instead, the trail has gone quiet.

I don't know when the next campaign event will be.

Like a campaign event that would have made sense in any kind of way before the last few weeks.

A politician in a room with real people talking to them, interacting with them, trying to win their votes directly.

Of course, that's about Donald Trump, too.

The president, instead of rallies, has begun using daily press briefings to put his message out and put himself out there.

He's come under fire for the federal government's response, and meanwhile, he's latched out at some governors asking for his help.

I want them to be appreciative.

We've done a great job.

In particular, he's targeted the governor of Michigan.

Michigan, all she does is she has no idea what's going on.

And all she does is say, oh, it's the federal government's fault.

Trump said he's even told Vice President Mike Pence not to call some governors.

Don't call the governor of Washington.

You're wasting your time with him.

Don't call the woman in Michigan.

The woman is Gretchen Whitmer.

She won in the 2018 Democratic blue Blue Wave in the state.

She's gotten a lot of national attention as a possible vice presidential candidate for Joe Biden, which makes sense.

She's a popular female governor from a key swing state.

President Trump's attention to her hasn't gone unnoticed.

Folks in Michigan have turned that woman from Michigan into a slogan.

She even wore it on a t-shirt when she appeared on the Daily Show this week.

So I wanted to talk to her to understand what her state's going through.

Michigan, after New York and New Jersey, seems right now to be the hardest hit in the United States, with the third most currently reported cases.

But also, I wanted to understand how she's navigating politics in a moment where it seems weird to be partisan, but also when it's become very clear how much politics is guiding what's coming out of the White House throughout its response to this pandemic.

Take a listen.

Hi, Governor.

How are you?

I'm good.

How are you doing?

You know, how are any of us, right?

I know.

I'm hanging in more often than not.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I really appreciate you taking the time to do this.

I know you've got a lot on your plate.

So can we just start with this?

Do you remember the first time, like the first day you heard about the coronavirus being a thing?

You know, in January and February, I remember

really kind of coming to terms with this is happening.

You know, this is a global global phenomenon that it's really just a matter of time I know that in February my sister really started sounding the alarm she was watching it very closely and our dad is in Florida and we've been consistently for a couple of months trying to get him to come back to Michigan frankly because we were so concerned about his ability to get the care he might need his COPD and

we really started working on him we have have still not been successful and that's why I've been watching what that governor's not been doing, increasingly alarmed.

Yeah, must be strange then to be looking at that from a policy perspective.

And obviously you and Governor DeSantis have approached this very differently, but then when it's your dad that's there, that changes all of it.

It's it's not about policy or politics, it's about your dad.

Yeah, I mean that's that's what it is.

You know, the population in Florida is older.

My dad with his health ailments, if he gets sick, you know, the odds are not good for him.

And that's precisely why every decision I've made has been with the thought of, you know, I have my asthmatic daughter or my father with COPD and what this can mean to see fellow governors, even, you know, in the last 24 hours, say they didn't realize that you can be asymptomatic and be carrying coronavirus is just kind of mind-boggling.

Yeah, that's Governor Kemp of Georgia that you're talking about who said that Wednesday.

And I think everybody is confused in

how he did not realize that that was a possibility.

I mean, for me, when I, I'll tell you, it was three weeks ago.

I had been, most of my job had been running around covering the presidential campaign.

And I wasn't out on the trail the last weekend before the Michigan primary.

But the Monday morning before, so this is March 9th,

I said to my editor, this feels like it's going to be a couple weeks where things get slipped down.

There won't be rallies for a few weeks.

And so I rushed out and I went to the rally in Detroit on that night, on Monday night before the primary where you officially endorsed Biden.

And Corey Booker was there and Kamala Harris was there.

And there were

a couple thousand people there.

Yeah.

I was walking around and saying to people, I was going to do a story of like how people decide to go to a rally even when when there's a worry about a virus.

And so I was having those kinds of conversations with people.

I wasn't shaking hands, but there were people at the door squirting hand sanitizer on the way in.

It seemed like, oh, this is kind of weird, but this is what we're doing.

Yeah.

I mean, in retrospect, were we just completely, all of us, you and me and everybody else in that room, just not thinking about what was coming down at that point?

I think we were getting so much inconsistent messaging from the federal government, and we hadn't seen it occur in Michigan at that juncture.

Now, the next day were the first two cases, right?

And that's when everything went into hyper speed.

But, you know, I've thought about that even because I'd already been, you know, I told people we've got this virus, we've got to stop shaking hands.

You know, we were doing fist bumps, we were doing elbow bumps.

I mean, you know, people were kind of teasing me about it because they'd say, oh, we can't shake your hand, you know.

And

I think that the inconsistent messaging and the lackadaisical attitude at the national level really undermined the seriousness of the issue for a lot of people.

Yeah.

I think it still is.

If you could go back in time and talk to yourself the morning of that rally, would you say maybe let's cancel that?

I would say start buying every N95 mask I can get my hands on.

I would say start.

things down immediately.

You know, despite all that, we've been more on the aggressive side and have moved faster than a lot of states.

And each of those decisions is hard.

It weighs on you.

And people, you know, you worry about people losing their jobs and not having money and businesses that may not open again and kids that you're pulling out of school.

And even at that juncture, there was conflicting advice even in the medical community.

And so I think all of these pieces contributed to the staggered, inconsistent response we've seen nationally.

It's a guess, if you have one, of why the outbreak in Detroit has been as bad as it's been.

In New York, Governor Cuomo has said that it's because people were in close quarters in New York, as New York City always is.

With Louisiana, there's been a theory that it's because of Mardi Gras.

What do you think happened?

How did it get to this point?

I think there's a lot of factors.

I've talked a lot with Dr.

Kell Doon about this.

She's the chief medical executive here.

I think a number of things.

First and foremost, I think the inconsistent messaging meant that people were not trustworthy of the seriousness of the advisories and the seriousness of the issue.

I think, you know, when you hear, oh, it's, you know, it's just one person coming from China, or you hear, you know, that this is a political hoax or stuff like that, I think undermines every piece of information you get thereafter.

I think, too, when people have underlying conditions, they suffer more.

Rates of heart disease, the rates of diabetes,

you know,

things that are associated with a community that has got too many people in poverty is part of it.

I think that, you know, there are a lot of churchgoers in, you know, Detroit.

The fact that people were still congregating even after we said you need to stay at home and we closed bars.

I think, you know, faith is really important in times of crisis.

And I think that's been something that has been hard for people, that you can't go and practice your faith as you're used to, but you need it more than ever.

We're going to take a short break.

We'll be back with Governor Gretchen Whitmer in a moment.

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There

are worries, it seems like real worries about what the next couple of weeks will be in Detroit, not just from the public health perspective, but

what will happen in terms of an economy that was, you know, Detroit

was the beginning to be real turnaround success story.

It's changed so much over the course of the last couple of years, but there's still, as you're saying, major poverty there.

What is the plan to think about that?

Well, I think you stay close with the local leaders.

We have to level with people and share information in real time

so that people really understand what we're confronting and why the decisions we're making are being made.

I think, too, to allay concerns that, you know, there is food.

We will make sure that the grocery stores are stocked up.

We've checked with the food supply chain.

just to you know give people some comfort where they're concerned about eviction i've issued an order that people aren't going to get evicted right now or you can't lose your house to foreclosure for not being able to pay your pay your bills right now These are all important pieces of the bigger question.

We're going to have to really be mindful about making all the decisions around what is in the best interest of the health of our people,

as well as our economy.

But the health comes first because if we think that we're just going to flip a switch and go back to life as it was and not suffer a second wave of COVID-19, then we're not paying attention to the experience of other countries that have done exactly that.

You know, Michiganers are, we got grit, you know, we've been knocked down and we dust ourselves off and get back up.

I think that Detroit's been a wonderful turnaround story and I think that that will continue.

But this is going to have an impact that we got to get over.

You know, during World War II, we were the arsenal of democracy, right?

We transitioned our auto plants into building planes and the things that we needed for World War II.

We're going to see these great companies step up to the plate and start fabricating masks and pieces of ventilators.

And so we're going to continue to be innovators and we're going to get through this.

In 2018, when you were running in your primary, single-payer healthcare was an issue and you were not for it.

Your primary opponent, whom you beat by quite a lot, was for it.

Has anything over the last couple of weeks made you think differently about that question or other questions about health care access from where you were before this this outbreak began?

I've always been for getting everyone covered.

The debate in my primary, I thought, was not an honest one because the state isn't going to do this on our own.

The ability for a governor who's going in with a Republican legislature, I can't tell people I can single-handedly do something that I know I can't do.

I just don't think it's intellectually honest.

And that's precisely why I took a more thoughtful approach to the same goal, which is getting more people covered.

It's impossible to talk with you about what's going on here without getting into what your relationship or relationship from afar has been with President Trump.

He doesn't want to talk to you.

If you were on a Zoom call with him that started right after this one, what would you say to him to try to break through?

Well, you know, it's interesting.

He did call me on Tuesday.

And, you know, I I just reiterated, I don't want to fight.

We need to join together in the fight against COVID-19.

We can't afford to fight each other.

We all have to be fighting this virus.

And so I would say thank you for the 400 ventilators that FEMA sent.

Say I'd need about 5,000 more immediately.

Every one of us has a job to do here.

And the federal government, I think, really should be taking more of a national strategy.

Having this patchwork of policies makes it more porous porous in terms of our ability to fight COVID-19 as a nation.

We need to focus on bringing manufacturing back into the United States.

We're waiting on swabs from Italy and masks from China.

Global trade is not all bad, but the fact of the matter is we are at a disadvantage in terms of fighting COVID-19.

And I would say we need to deploy the Defense Production Act in a meaningful, real way to meet the needs of Americans right now.

So

these are the things I've said consistently on television.

I've seen other governors say essentially the same thing and not

have the same reaction.

I'm not going to spend a lot of energy analyzing the difference there, but I will just say this.

I'm doing my job and I'm doing the same job that governors across the country are doing.

We are trying in this untenable environment to do as much as we can for the people we serve.

Are people going to die because of the government shortfalls?

More people are going to get sick and more lives are going to be lost because we don't have enough testing, because we don't have enough PPE, because there aren't enough ventilators, because the national stockpile, I understand, is getting close to being depleted.

And we're not even close to meeting the needs of people that are already sick and more and more going to get sick.

And so I do think that there's going to be a horrible cost because of all of these pieces.

Joe Biden has been

talking with a lot of people about what's going on.

One of the things that puts you into the conversation is, of course, you get talked about as a potential running mate for him.

He said he's going to pick a woman.

You're from a swing state.

Even aside from that, you've generated a lot of national political interest.

If he called and asked you to do it, what would your answer be?

Well, I'll just say this.

You know, I am 15 months into my job as governor.

I worked for two years to earn the opportunity to have this job.

And

no no one could ever anticipated that we would be here in this moment.

I didn't,

you know, I go out looking for national spotlight.

I know that the most important thing where I'm spending all my energy right now is trying to help my frontline health care providers and try to educate Michiganders so that we can slow the spread of COVID-19.

And so it's, I don't like being attacked in national news.

I don't, you know, I didn't go out of my way looking for all of this conversation.

I just know that I need assistance, and I need to use my voice every opportunity to try to highlight what's happening in Michigan so that I can help my nurses and doctors and respiratory therapists who are doing superhero work.

With regard to the political conversation about what can be done or should be done, I mean, we're going to be confronted with something of this nature again.

And we've got to learn lessons from this.

And we got to make sure that we are stronger, we're more prepared, and that we are better able to take care of Americans when another crisis like this happens.

And that's the conversation for tomorrow.

But for today, all I can focus on is trying to get more PPE for the people of my state.

The president called you that woman from Michigan when you did your daily show interview last night.

You were wearing a t-shirt that had that written on it.

So there's some of this that you seem to have identified with.

I have been called many things in my lifetime and I know that you know if you can try to keep your

you know try to keep it in perspective someone sent me that shirt and I thought it was

kind of said you know this is not something that is going to hold me back I'm going to keep trying to forge every alliance I can whether it's with the administration or it's with a Michigan business group that can produce some of these needed things or it is someone who will reach in and contract with me to to help me get this critical equipment in in.

We're going to keep perspective because that's what's most important, not names.

We are not one another's enemy.

The enemy is COVID-19.

All right, Governor, thanks for taking the time to do this.

I wish you well and good luck in the craziness of what we're all going through.

Thanks for being here with us.

Take care of yourself.

Bye-bye.

That'll do it for this week of the ticket, Politics from the Atlantic.

Thanks to Kevin Townsend for producing and editing this episode and to Catherine Wells, the executive producer for Atlantic Podcasts.

Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

Thanks for listening.

Stay safe out there, and catch you next week.