President Donald Trump appeared to call attention to a disturbing attack at a nursing home in Michigan late on Thursday night while the state’s governor, Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, appears to still not have addressed the incident, and instead appeared on MSNBC tonight where she attacked the president for not wearing a mask during a trip that he made to a Ford plant in Michigan earlier in the day.
Trump tweeted: “Is this even possible to believe? Can this be for real? Where is this nursing home, how is the victim doing?”
Is this even possible to believe? Can this be for real? Where is this nursing home, how is the victim doing?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 22, 2020
The president’s tweet comes after a video clip of a man appearing to viciously beat an elderly man at a nursing home in Detroit went viral earlier in the day, racking up millions of views after it was made public earlier in the week.
Meanwhile, Whitmer, who is reportedly being considered as a vice presidential pick by presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden, appeared on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” where she attacked Trump for not wearing a mask during his visit to the Ford plant.
Gov. Whitmer tells @Maddow it was "disappointing" to see President Trump not a wear a face mask during his trip to a Michigan Ford plant.
"Anyone in a position of power and responsibility, I hope, emulates and does precisely what they're asking everyone else to do" pic.twitter.com/fZCP7BMmxn
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) May 22, 2020
The Detroit News reported early on Thursday that they had arrested a 20-year-old suspect in the case after the disturbing video went viral on social media. The Daily Wire published a report earlier tonight that noted that Whitmer’s office had not immediately responded to a request for comment on the matter.
The news comes as Whitmer is already facing heat over her decision to force nursing homes to accept coronavirus patients.
The Detroit News Editorial Board wrote:
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer must reverse course on her executive order that is placing Michigan’s most vulnerable seniors at risk. It’s a matter of life and death.
In mid-April Whitmer issued an executive order that ultimately instructed many of the state’s nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients. That put other residents in jeopardy, and may well have contributed to the high death rate in Michigan nursing homes
About a third of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. have been at nursing homes, and the same is true in Michigan, according to some estimates — although the state Department of Health and Human Services hasn’t been able to offer concrete numbers.
The Detroit Free Press reported that “thousands of nursing home residents across Michigan have fallen ill from the novel coronavirus and hundreds have died,” but the true extent of the devastation under Whitmer’s leadership is not known because “the state has yet to tally how many total nursing home residents have tested positive for COVID-19 since the crisis began.”
Whitmer has come under intense scrutiny during over her handling of the pandemic, including her administration’s decision to give taxpayer-funded coronavirus relief money to Democrat organizations and operatives, contracts that Whitmer had to cancel after facing backlash.
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