Michigan is such a clear 2024 presidential election battleground that President Joe Biden tapped Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as a co-chair of his reelection campaign, and she is firing a salvo at political rival Donald Trump before his Saturday night rally.
"Michigan didn't buy what Donald Trump was selling in 2020 and we won't in 2024," Whitmer concluded in a rare pre-Trump rally statement Saturday morning.
"When Donald Trump comes to Michigan, he'll see a state that is better off because President Biden has our backs," her statement began.
"Donald Trump creates division everywhere he goes, but we've come together to make our state more welcoming and more prosperous."
The "welcoming" claim comes as she makes a rare statement saying the popular former president is actually unwelcome in the state for a rally Saturday night, which will live and in its entirety on Newsmax and the free Newsmax2 streaming platform. Pre-rally coverage begins at 6 p.m. ET, with Trump remarks expected to begin around 7 p.m. ET.
Trump holds multiple rallies a week, and a Democrat leader rarely makes a pre-Trump statement like Whitmer's Saturday morning.
Michigan is one of the biggest battleground states from '20 and for '24, with Trump leading Biden in the January poll released by The Detroit News.
Trump leads Biden in the RealClear Politics polling average by 4.8 points (46.9%-42.1%).
Whitmer was at the forefront of the 2020 presidential election targeting Trump, too. An FBI sting operation foiled an alleged Whitmer kidnapping plot, in which defendants alleged the FBI informants were used to plan and lure conservatives to kidnap the Democrat governor.
During the height of the 2020 presidential election, after the foiled Whitmer plot, Steven D'Antuono left as the chief of the Detroit Field Office to become assistant director in charge of the FBI's Washington Field Office.
Then Jan. 6, 2021, happened.
It has often been noted in conservative media that the storming of a Capitol was not original to Jan. 6. It was Whitmer's Michigan Capitol that was stormed under D'Antuono's watch on April 30, 2020, and Whitmer said that set the stage for Washington's Capitol to be stormed under D'Antuono's watch.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.