Earlier this month, Michigan state lawmaker Rep. Karen Whitsett (D) revealed she had been diagnosed with the Wuhan Coronavirus, and noted that her doctor had prescribed hydroxychloroquine, a drug that President Trump has often touted as a treatment for the virus.
At the time, Whitsett told the Detroit Free Press that “it was less than two hours” after she began taking it that she began to feel relief from the symptoms she had been feeling, which included shortness of breath and swollen lymph nodes.
Whitsett also credited Trump for her recovery, telling the paper that “It has a lot to do with the president … bringing it up.”
Trump congratulated Whitsett in a tweet the same day the Freep’s report was published.
She was also a guest on Laura Ingraham’s program on Fox News, where she talked about her recovery.
Apparently crediting Trump, appearing on Fox News, and attending a Trump-led White House gathering a week later that honored Wuhan Coranavirus survivors was too much for Detroit’s 13th Congressional District Democratic Party Organization, who have decided to vote Saturday on censuring Whitsett and barring future endorsements of her:
State Rep. Karen Whitsett, D-Detroit, broke protocol by meeting with President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence during an April 14 meeting of COVID-19 survivors, during which she credited hydroxychloroquine for saving her life.[…]The group, as first reported by Gongwer News Service, plans to vote Saturday on a resolution to censure Whitsett, a first-term lawmaker representing the 9th Michigan House District.The admonition means she will not get the group’s endorsement for this year nor will she be able to engage in the group’s activities for the next two election cycles.
The Detroit News extensively quoted group chairman Jonathan Kinloch, who claimed the organization had been unhappy with Whitsett since February, when she accused Michigan House Democratic Leader Christine Greig of racism and claimed Greig punished her staff over a vote on a no-fault auto reform bill.
Whitsett, the paper notes, has not only been critical of Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, but she’s also pushed back on local Democratic criticism of her remarks crediting Trump, so much so that Kinloch and the rest of the 13th Congressional Democratic group summoned her Sunday to a multiple-candidate screening for her house district.
When she reportedly refused, Kinloch got very upset, according to the Detroit News:
“Don’t play with us,” Kinloch said. “This is very serious when we ask to have a conversation with you and you choose not to.“We’re not going to accept that. How they handle you in Lansing as far as the Democratic caucus that’s on them. But how we handle you back at home, that’s on us.”
Breitbart News interviewed Kinloch, who went on to mansplain about how Whitsett should just sit down and shut up:
“Folks in the 13th were complaining about why is she attacking, why can’t she just sit down, she’s always acting like a fool up there in Lansing,” 13th District Democrat Party Chairman Jonathan Kinloch told Breitbart News.Kinloch said her medical treatments “are between her and her doctor,” but the party’s beef with Whitsett is that she was critical of party members, namely Whitmer.
Here is, in part, what the resolution states:
State Representative Karen Whitsett has repeatedly and publicly praised the president’s delayed and misguided COVID-19 response efforts in contradiction with the scientifically based and action-oriented response from Michigan’s duly election Democratic leadership … endangering the health, safety and welfare of her constituents, the city of Detroit, and the state of Michigan.
Whitsett blasted the party for their attempts at punishing her, tagging President Trump in a tweet to get his attention:
He hasn’t yet responded, but Donald Trump, Jr. weighed in earlier:
To say the group’s treatment of Whitsett has been appalling would be a gross understatement. I can’t imagine that even in an alternative universe it would be acceptable for any political figure who had survived a deadly disease to be censured simply for crediting someone from the opposing party for opening the door to the treatment she credits with saving her life.
Keep in mind, too, that two of Whitsett’s relatives died from the Wuhan Coronavirus, and one of Whitsett’s Democratic colleagues in the statehouse also died from it last month. Whitsett’s husband was also diagnosed with it and took hydroxychloroquine for treatment. So this is obviously something very personal for her, very life-altering.
As all this has played out, 13th US House District Rep. Rashida Tlaib has been strangely silent. It’d be nice to think that maybe even she understands that playing politics in the middle of a pandemic, as her colleagues in the 13th district Democratic organization have shamelessly done, is not a good look. But considering she’s played politics on her Twitter feed throughout the pandemic, that’s obviously not the case.
This is one of those times where I suspect people are hoping Trump will amplify the issue on his Twitter feed. Maybe that, and the pushback Kinloch and the rest of the Democrats who are on board with this idea receive, would make them reconsider.
Stay tuned.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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