LANSING, MI (WHTC-AM/FM) – It’s a case of “he said, she said” going on in the state Capitol between Michigan’s top elected state official and the leading elected official from the opposite political party.
When asked during Tuesday’s briefing on Michigan’s response to the COVID 19 outbreak about not having talked, one-on-one, with Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey “in weeks,” Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D-East Lansing) responded, “We’ve had a lot of conversations, we’ve talked as a group, as a quadrant, but he’s not called me and I have not returned a phone call. I’m always happy to get on the phone; I have put phone calls in and they’ve not always have been returned. I don’t know what’s going on there, but I’m always happy to have a conversation with the Senate Majority Leader, the Senate Minority Leader, whoever it is.”
During a Wednesday interview on WTVB’s “Delaney in the Morning,” the Republican lawmaker from Clarklake responded, “Let’s get the truth on the table, once and for all. She’s placed one call to me, asking me to apologize to her when I said that she lied about the boating incident (stemming from Dr. Marc Mallory, the Governor’s husband, and getting a boat into the water at a Northern Michigan lake over the Memorial Day weekend), and I didn’t call her back because there’s no reason to apologize, because she lied.
“In every quadrant meeting, which has been virtual (in nature), I have asked the question, ‘When are we going to get together in person?’ In every time, she’s answered, ‘I’m not ready to do that yet.’ She’s misleading, at the least, and at the worst, (she’s) continuing this trend of not telling the truth, based on my own real experience.”
The Legislature’s joint lawsuit against the Governor over her continued enactment of emergency powers during the COVID 19 outbreak, based on an interpretation of a 1945 law, is currently before the state Court of Appeals.
