LANSING– Yesterday, the New York Times highlighted Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on Michigan as the erratic president sees the critical state slipping through his fingers. The piece featured Trump’s threats to strip federal funding from the state, his attacks on the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, and his failed COVID-19 response which has endangered Michiganders and decimated the economy. READ MORE HERE:
The New York Times: In Seeking to Hold Michigan, Trump Can Be His Own Worst Enemy
By Jonathan Martin and Kathy Gray
- A day before his visit in May to Michigan, where unemployment has climbed to 23 percent and flooding had grown severe enough to make national headlines, President Trump threatened to “hold up funding” for a state he almost certainly must carry to win re-election. The rationale behind this extraordinary warning and apparent act of self-sabotage? Two years after Michigan residents overwhelmingly approved no-excuse absentee voting, the secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said she would send absentee ballot applications to all voters.
- Even before the coronavirus infected more than 56,000 residents and left it with the second-worst unemployment rate in the country, Michigan was shaping up to be the most difficult state for Mr. Trump to win a second time. Now his prospects there appear dimmer — in part because of his own conduct.
- In addition to his ultimatum over federal funding, Mr. Trump has ridiculed a half-dozen of the state’s female leaders, proposed cutting support for the Great Lakes and suggested a beloved former lawmaker from Michigan is in hell.
- Largely detached from the details of policymaking, he inflicted a wound on himself by proposing budgets that nearly eliminate federal spending on Great Lakes restoration, a bipartisan priority in the state.
