Tragic Details About Gretchen Whitmer

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The following article includes mentions of sexual assault.

Gretchen Whitmer is having a moment — and not exactly the kind she'd want. After years of meticulously crafting her image as a rising Democrat star and a potential White House contender, she's being hit with criticisms left and right. This is because after years of clashing with Donald Trump — and being one of his favorite political punching bags — she's now being seen literally being shoulder to shoulder with him.

A staunch Democrat who has long championed progressive policies, Whitmer has spent years taking heat from Trump for everything from COVID response to simply existing as "that woman in Michigan." But now she seems to be playing a different game. She was spotted in the Oval Office while Trump signed controversial executive orders (doing her best to avoid the camera, to be fair) and later seen chatting — even hugging — the president as he visited Michigan to tout a new fighter jet mission for a state Air National Guard base. Whitmer, though, in her defense, insists it's all part of her duties as governor. "My job is to do the right thing for the people of Michigan," she told The Associated Press. "I'm not thinking about anything beyond that, and I know it's hard for people to get their head around."

Whether or not her actions will hurt her chances of running as president in 2028 remains to be seen, but there's no denying that all eyes are on her. What many don't see, however, is the personal toll behind the headlines. Whitmer isn't just a politician with presidential ambitions — she's also someone who's faced more than her fair share of hardship. Here are just a few of them.

Back in 2013, while serving in the Michigan Senate, Gretchen Whitmer took a flamethrower to what many called the "rape insurance" law — a bill that forced women to buy a separate insurance rider in advance if they wanted abortion coverage, even in cases of rape or incest. "This tells women that were raped and became pregnant that they should have thought ahead and bought special insurance for it," she said in a hearing. "By moving forward on this initiative, Senate Republicans want to essentially require Michigan women to plan ahead and financially invest in healthcare coverage for potentially having their bodies violated and assaulted." 

But as it turns out, Whitmer's outrage was not just political — it was also a personal one. She revealed that she had been a victim of rape in college, something that she had kept to herself until she was pushed to speak out against the bill. "It was terrifying to think of opening myself up, of telling this room full of mostly men about being assaulted as a young woman. Yet, the longer I spoke, the more I realized I had to do it," she wrote in her "True Gretch" memoir. Unfortunately, the bill passed anyway, but that didn't discourage Whitmer from fighting the good fight. Instead, she spent the next decade pushing for women's rights and fighting to get the law repealed. 

And in December 2023, exactly 10 years later, she won. The law was finally repealed once and for all. "It was a good opportunity to show people that these fights are hard," she said in Katie Couric's "Next Question" podcast. "It can feel very demoralizing and discouraging, but we're right on these issues, and we can win them. That might take longer than it should, though."

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

Less than a decade after baring her soul into the world about surviving sexual assault, Gretchen Whitmer faced another kind of nightmare: a kidnapping plot. In 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Michigan governor enforced strict stay-at-home orders — not exactly popular with her constituents who insisted that going outside was part of their constitutional rights. Protests erupted — some peaceful, some not-so-much — but one far-right group took things to the extremes. A group who called themselves "Wolverine Watchmen" plotted to kidnap Whitmer.

According to The New York Times, they surveilled the politician in her vacation home, trained with weapons, and fantasized about overthrowing the government. One of them was even caught saying in a meeting, "Snatch and grab, man. Grab the f***in' governor. Just grab the b****. Because at that point, we do that, dude — it's over." Fortunately, the FBI foiled their plan before anyone got hurt. Whitmer didn't hold back in her response, calling the would-be kidnappers "sick and depraved men." She said in a statement, "I knew this job was going to be hard, but I'll be honest, I never could have imagined anything like this... We are not each other's enemies. The virus is our enemy."

She also went on to ask for everyone's cooperation, telling Michigan residents that the measures in place exist to save lives. Addressing her constituents, she promised, "I will never stop doing everything in my power to keep you and your families safe. You don't have to agree with me, but I do ask one thing: Never forget that we are all in this together." As of this writing, two men who were part of the group have been convicted, while five have been acquitted.

As if the kidnapping plot wasn't enough, Gretchen Whitmer also caught major heat for her COVID-19 policies — arguably one of the most controversial chapters of her career. Early in the pandemic, she rolled out a "Stay Home, Stay Safe" executive order in Michigan that shut down non-essential businesses statewide, a similar strategy to New York City's lockdown implemented by then-governor Andrew Cuomo. While the science backed her, and the intent was to save lives, Whitmer stayed firm even as cases had already been declining. 

But even among her more rational critics, there was an outpour of frustration — especially when Whitmer herself got caught breaking the rules. At one point, it was proven that she didn't walk the talk, having been photographed at a restaurant with 12 people in close proximity, essentially violating the Department of Health and Human Services' suggestion that only a maximum of six people may be seated together. "Whitmer continues to defy her own ridiculous restrictions while everyone else is forced to abide by them," one of her critics, Tori Sachs, executive director of the conservative Michigan Freedom Fund, said.

To her credit, Whitmer didn't deny her mishap and immediately issued an apology. "Throughout the pandemic, I've been committed to following public health protocols. Yesterday, I went with friends to a local restaurant," she said in a statement. "As more people arrived, the tables were pushed together. Because we were all vaccinated, we didn't stop to think about it. In retrospect, I should have thought about it. I am human. I made a mistake, and I apologize."

Just when it seemed that Gretchen Whitmer had maxed out her public outage meter — between strict COVID-19 policies and being caught breaking one — along came yet another controversy. In April 2021, around the time that she urged Michigan residents to avoid spring break travel to curb COVID spikes, she took a 2-day trip to Miami, but it was only to check in on her chronically ill father. 

Of course, critics wasted no time twisting the narrative. To them, it wasn't a personal visit, but rather a vacation. "We all had family members that had been sick. Everybody had gone through that. But we weren't even allowed to see them," Republican gubernatorial nominee Tudor Dixon said at the time. "And she has the audacity to come back to Michigan and say, 'I would have been hit politically if I hadn't gone to see my father.'" She even went as far as to claim that Whitmer's father had been seen out and about. "So how sick was he?"

But Whitmer didn't take all that lying down. She defended her decision, saying that her trip was anything but a vacation. "I was doing both my job as governor from a distance and being that of a daughter who was helping out a parent who needed a little help," she told The Washington Post, and went on to address her critics. "It's maddening, because a lot of these same people would accuse me of not having family values if I didn't show up when a family member needed some help, right?" she added. "It seems like people are more focused on scoring political points than actually doing the work to keep people safe and to get our economy back on track."

At this point, it's safe to say Gretchen Whitmer that been a frequent target of political criticism throughout her career — and not just from angry constituents, but from Donald Trump himself, too, who once referred to her as "that woman in Michigan." Over the years, she's taken more than her fair share of heat, which she had to learn how to live with. In an essay for Oprah Daily, Whitmer reflected on the toll of Trump's attacks. "Sadly, in the last decade, we've seen this violent rhetoric grow and get normalized, and it's incredibly destructive. I can tell you that anytime the former president uttered my name, or even tweeted about my state, I got more threats," she wrote. "There's a cause and effect there, and it's really crucial that people of goodwill on both sides of the aisle hold one another accountable  — not just the people across the aisle, but people within their own parties, too."

The vitriol must be even worse now that it seems like she's aligning herself with Trump, after years of practically distancing himself from him and the Republican party at large. "Gretchen Whitmer has the political instincts of a wet paper bag. she's beyond done she's overcooked," one person on X (formerly Twitter) said.

Whitmer, though, has since learned not to take things personally. While she's not pretending that the hate doesn't sting, she's not letting it consume her, either. "At the end of the day, the people hurling them, it's really about them and not about me," she penned. "I am an ordinary person. I'm in an extraordinary role and in an extraordinary time, but I'm an ordinary person. I have to remind myself of that."