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Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer listens to reporters during a news conference.

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Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer listens to reporters during a news conference.

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Gretchen Whitmer is the governor of Michigan, and also co-chair of the Biden-Harris reelection campaign.

Consider This host Juana Summers asked the governor if she shares concerns over President Biden’s fitness to serve and his mental acuity:

“I don’t,” Whitmer said. “I’ve got complete confidence in our president. He has the receipts; He’s delivered, whether it’s on shoring supply chains or bringing down the cost of insulin, protecting the woman’s right to make her own decisions about her body. These are the fundamentals that I know are weighing on voters all across the country. This president has delivered on these and he’s an incredibly decent, hard working public servant. And I’m very, very supportive of his re-election.”

Whitmer’s name has been floated as a potential Biden replacement. However, when asked if she would consider jumping into the race if Biden were to withdraw, she said that the president would not do that:

“He is going to stay on the ballot. And so I’m not going to go down the path of all sorts of potential scenarios that I don’t think are ever going to play out. I appreciate that people have suggested I’ve got some skills that might translate, but it is a set field and any vote that is short of an affirmative vote for Joe Biden supports a potential Trump second term. And we know how devastating that would be for women’s rights, for our economy, for our democracy. And that’s why I’m not going to waver in my support.”

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Summers also asked Whitmer if she thought President Biden was the person best positioned to defeat Donald Trump in November, here’s how she responded:

“Listen, President Biden is the Democratic candidate. I am a co-chair of the Biden-Harris campaign. I am proud to be because I know as governor that this president has done more to help us in Michigan,” she said. “So I do think that four more years with this president will help Michiganders get ahead. It’ll help Americans everywhere get ahead. And that’s why I am unwavering in my support,” she said.

“Our choices on the ballot right now are President Biden and former President Trump. That is the binary choice in front of us. I am an enthusiastic supporter of President Biden’s, and I’m going to work my tail off to make sure he gets a second term.”

Michigan is a battleground state

Swing states hold a lot of power in a presidential election. Former President Trump narrowly won the state of Michigan in 2016, and then-candidate Biden flipped it four years later in 2020.

Biden heads to Michigan this Friday, which will be his fourth visit there this year. Whitmer thinks Biden can win the state:

“In my conversations across Michigan, whether it is around reproductive rights roundtables or it is simply about ‘how do we restore some decency to this chaotic world with such hot rhetoric,’ I know that we are aligned. People want to know that they’ve got leaders who care about them, who are going to make their lives easier and help them achieve their goals, be able to take care of a family. And President Biden has done that.”

It has been two years since Roe versus Wade was overturned, but Michigan was able to enshrine reproductive rights in the state’s constitution through a ballot initiative. It’s an issue important to Whitmer and her state in this election:

“I think it’s really important to remind people that if there is a second Trump term, he gets additional appointees to the United States Supreme Court. These cases around mifepristone or IVF or even possibly stem cell research could absolutely go the other way with the conservative court that Trump put into place and could grow in a second Trump term,” she says.

“I think what we’ve seen in the elections since the Dobbs decision became the law is when people are given the opportunity to weigh in, they resoundingly support reproductive freedom, whether it’s in Ohio or Kentucky or the state of Michigan. And yet, while we’ve made great strides in these individual states, what happens on the national level could undo all that work. And so abortion is very much on this ballot. And that, I think, is something that we can’t lose sight of how high the stakes are.”

On her new book.

In True Gretch: What I’ve Learned About Life, Leadership and Everything in Between, Whitmer wanted to put “a little light out there” during what she describes as a dark time. She says one of the things that she gets asked most frequently is how she stays positive, when everything feels so heavy, so she wrote the book to share her philosophy:

“My leadership philosophy, and kind of an easy-to-read handbook so that people can either get a little laugh at my expense or maybe get some inspiration or take a lesson that I’ve used to help navigate unimaginable circumstances and get through it and keep an eye toward the future.”

As a woman in the public eye, Whitmer says she’s attracted a lot of unwanted and unkind attention, sometimes about her body or what she’s wearing. So the best piece of political advice she’s ever gotten? Take nothing personally.

“It is kind of a riff on my father’s philosophy about trying to see the good and recognizing [that] if you see the humanity in another person, you can do a better job of not taking things personally… And that helps me get more things done,” she says. “Whitmers have a short memory and thick skin. And those, I think, are two attributes that help in this line of work.”

As for what’s next, Whitmer is focusing on the two and a half years she has left as Governor of Michigan:

“I don’t want to take my eye off the ball as we’ve got lots of big, important things that I want to get done between now and the last day as governor of Michigan. I’ll keep you posted.”

This episode was produced by Marc Rivers and Kira Wakeam. It was edited by Courtney Dorning and Christopher Intagliata. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.