After MSNBC host Rachel Maddow mocked Michiganders protesting their Democrat governor’s sweeping draconian stay-at-home measures on her Wednesday night show, she brought on that governor for a softball interview full of flattery, Thursday. Maddow even ended the interview entertaining the idea that the Democrat governor could be our next Vice President.
Immediately before bringing on Michigan governor and media favorite Gretchen Whitmer, Maddow sneered at her state’s residents trying to recall her with a dismissive and haughty assessment:
[C]onfederate flag waving, Trump 2020 flag waving, people out on the street and ultimately blocking traffic in protest of the Michigan governor having a stay-at-home order in place. These protesters demanding that the governor ‘just rip the lid off, open it back up, let folks get back to business as usual, why all this overreacting?’ It's only more than 2,000 dead and counting.
Whitmer joined Maddow in attacking protesters, once the interview began. Maddow hyped how her state was in “dire straits” and asked her what she was most worried about in the coming weeks. Whitmer used that question to blame her constituents protesting her as a reason to extend her extreme stay-at-home orders:
When you see a political rally, that's what it was yesterday, a political rally, a political rally like that where people are not wearing masks and in close quarters and they are touching one another, you know that that's precisely what makes this kind of a disease drag out and expose more people. People can converge together in Lansing and then they went back out to their homes across the state of Michigan. You know, the odds are very high that that's, they're spreading covid-19 along with it. And so it's that kind of irresponsible action that puts us in this situation where we might have to actually think about extending stay-at-home orders, which is supposedly what they were protesting.
After throwing some more softballs to the woman who is on Joe Biden’s shortlist for Vice President, Maddow went on to praise Whitmer as “out ahead” of her fellow governors in the “mandates” she’s made for her state. Maddow specifically singled out nursing homes instead of the more ludicrous mandates such as deeming paint and gardening supplies/seeds as “non-essential” while at the same time, saying abortions were a “life-sustaining” medical procedure that “government should not be getting in the middle of."
The MSNBC host continued admiring Whitmer’s power trip, saying she was “cutting a new path:”
“What kind of principals did you consult, what kind of expertise did you consult to come up with this list of nursing homes because you're really cutting a new path here in a way that other states haven't done,” she gushed.
Immediately after Whitmer answered this question, Maddow was eager to gossip about Whitmer’s chances that Biden will pick her for VP:
Governor, I have to ask you, and I'm sure you know it is coming, I know it is probably all the national discussion about you has probably been a distraction as you're dealing with this crisis in your state, but as Joe Biden enters into his, the phase of his candidacy, in which he needs to be thinking about a running mate, a lot of people have talked about you. If Vice president Biden asked to you be his running mate would you say yes?
Like in other interviews, the governor abstained from answering the question, saying she had her “hands full with COVID-19 and trying to save lives.”
During this time, the media has rallied around Democrat governors as our “acting” national leaders while deliberately not airing President Trump’s full press conferences on the coronavirus.
