Trump Feuds With a Third Female Michigan Democrat, Ripping ‘Do Nothing’ State AG After She Calls Out His Illegal Refusal to Follow Mask Rules
President Donald Trump engaged in a public feud with yet another female politician from Michigan, this time smearing the state’s Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel as “wacky” and “do nothing” after she publicly called him out for refusing to comply with her state’s mask wearing laws during a visit to a Ford PPE plant.
In a late night, mini-Twitter thread, Trump defended himself and Ford Motor Company for his decision to wear a mask behind the scenes for just a few brief minutes during a nearly two-hour tour of the facility. Throughout the tour, all the Ford officials hosting the president wore masks — and the company had warned the White House ahead of time that it expected all visitors to wear masks.
The Wacky Do Nothing Attorney General of Michigan, Dana Nessel, is viciously threatening Ford Motor Company for the fact that I inspected a Ventilator plant without a mask. Not their fault, & I did put on a mask. No wonder many auto companies left Michigan, until I came along!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 22, 2020
Do nothing A.G. of the Great State of Michigan, Dana Nessel, should not be taking her anger and stupidity out on Ford Motor – they might get upset with you and leave the state, like so many other companies have – until I came along and brought business back to Michigan. JOBS!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 22, 2020
Trump seemed to be reacting to Nessel’s aggressive criticism of him just moments after his tour ended, which she made during an evening appearance on CNN’s Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.
Calling him a “ridiculous person,” Nessel said Trump’s choice to not wear a his mask for most of the tour, including the portions filmed by TV cameras, showed “the same message since he first took office in 2017, which is I don’t care about you. I don’t care about your health, about your safety, your welfare. I don’t care about anyone but myself.”
And while Trump characterized Nessel as “viciously threatening” Ford for allowing Trump to break her state’s mask wearing laws, her actual comments were much less dramatic. “I think that we’re going to have to have a serious conversation with Ford in the event that they permitted the president to be in publicly enclosed places in violation of the order,” Nessel said. “We just opened up these plants again, just on Monday, Ford already had a few plants they had to close down because people were testing positive again. The last thing we want to see is for this particular plant to close its doors, shutter its doors again because someone may have been infected by the president.”
The president’s social media beef with Nessel came just one day after he attacked — though not by name — Michigan’s Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, while making several false claims in his Twitter rant. Trump inaccurately said Benson, also a Democrat, had gone “rogue” and independently mailed absentee ballots to everyone in the state, an “illegal” act. In fact, Benson had mailed absentee ballot applications to everyone in her state, a move endorsed by the Gov. Gretchen Whitmer administration and in keeping with the state’s constitution, which guarantees that state’s citizens the right to vote by mail.
That followed the multiple insults Trump has lobbed at Whitmer, Michigan’s Democratic governor, over the past few weeks, most of which have focused on her insistence on lockdown rules to prevent the further spread of the coronavirus. Whitmer’s performance during the outbreak has earned her high marks, however, as a recent poll fond 64 percent of the state’s residents approve of the job she is doing, 21 percentage points higher than Trump’s own job approval on the Covid-19 outbreak in Michigan. That same poll also found four out of five of Michiganders personally weak masks in public, putting Trump’s behavior in the distinct minority in that state.
Watch the video above, via CNN.
