The Democrats just can’t stop lying. President Biden lies, but probably doesn’t even know it, John Fetterman just lied about not previously being against fracking, and Kathy Hochul lied when she said that criminals in New York are facing consequences.
But maybe one of the biggest lies told by Democrats this week came from Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. During her debate with Tudor Dixon, she lied about her responsibility in her state’s school lockdowns during the COVID pandemic. She was one of the worst governors during the pandemic in the country.
Whitmer tried to claim in the debate that she only kept children out of the classroom for three months as she worked to explain why school test scores are drastically falling.
“Mrs. Dixon says I kept students out longer than any other state…kids were out for three months,” Whitmer claimed with a sly smile.
What? It’s a wonder her nose didn’t start to grow!
Tuder Dixon was on it immediately.
“I’m pretty sure I just heard an audible gasp around town when Gretchen Whitmer said that kids were out of school for three months. Maybe she thinks she can convince YOU that schools were closed for three months, but you know better because your students are the ones that are desperately behind,” Dixon declared.
Does Whitmer think parents will believe her just because she says so? Does she think parents aren’t very aware of how long their children were out of the classroom and how it has caused them to fall so far behind? Whitmer’s lie is not going to just slip by, it is just so far from the truth, and people are certainly going to show her the repercussion when they get into the voting booth.
Parents have become a powerful voting block in Michigan, just like there were with Glenn Youngkin’s election in Virginia last year. The lockdowns cost her votes with parents, and now lying about it may have just sealed her fate.
The truth is that Gov. Whitmer closed schools from March 2020 through April 5. But she extended that closure until the year’s end for classes in June. The next school year in Michigan, her Health Department shut down high schools and colleges again until November 2020.
The director for the free-market Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Michigan, Jerrett Skorup, posted an old state health department notice from November of 2020 that indicated highs schools and colleges were closed for in-person learning and local school districts had the option of keeping K-8 grade schools open. This clearly shows that the governor’s statement at the debate was false.
The Mackinac Center also showed how Whitmer did not recommend that schools return to in-person instruction until March 2021. At that time she made a public announcement that 23% of Michigan schools were fully in-person compared to 47% in Ohio, 54% in Wisconsin, and 76% in Indiana.
Many of the larger school districts in her state only offered virtual instruction for almost a whole academic year. Michigan was ranked 33rd among other states in reference to in-person instruction for the 2020-2021 school year.
Schools in Detroit and Flint were closed for in-person learning for the longest amount of time, and minority students saw the greatest decrease in test scores. Black third-graders saw their proficiency standard fall by more than one-third.
Suffice it to say that one more debate in the country went bad for the Democrats because one more Democrat lied about their failed policies. This race in Michigan is now a dead heat with 48% going to each candidate.
