Cheryl Fritze, director of News Operations for Michigan News Source, said there’s no doubt that Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has presidential ambitions, pointing to her new book published by Simon & Schuster called “True Gretch: What I’ve Learned About Life, Leadership, and Everything in Between.”
Whitmer began serving as Michigan’s governor in 2019. She was elected to a second final term in 2022, which ends in 2027.
“This is not the end of her in politics,” Fritze said on Tuesday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Fritze addressed Whitmer’s new book, which was officially released on Tuesday. She noted how the governor frequently downplayed her ambitions to run for president in the future during interviews about the book while also pointing out how Whitmer would word such answers “very carefully.”
“In the interviews leading up to the book…She talked about the fact that she doesn’t want to run for future office, but she words it very carefully. She is a good wordsmith and she says that she has no plans to run for president not this year or the foreseeable future in 2028. Now that’s what I would say if I had said, ‘Am I cooking dinner tonight? I have no plans to cook dinner tonight. I may not.’ It’s clever semantics,” Fritze explained.
Fritze also agreed with Leahy that when Whitmer “looks in the mirror,” she “sees the first female president of the United States.”
“I would agree with that. I believe that she knows that this is just what you do in the process because remember, she’s co-chair of president Biden’s reelection campaign. Now, there was a Politico article a week or so ago in which allegedly they reported there was a phone call with Gretchen and powers that be in Washington saying Biden cannot win in Michigan. She denies that, and as she wants to curse and swear routinely, she said anybody who believes that he can’t win in Michigan is BS,” Fritze said.
To Whitmer’s frequent cursing when speaking in her official capacity as governor, Fritze said the governor’s swear words seem to be part of her branding for likeability.
“We’ve done several stories at Michigan News Source on this because we saw this early on and I understand that while out on the campaign trail giving a speech, you may say something and go, ‘Oh, shouldn’t have said that,’ but she does it on letterhead stationary in press releases. ‘Fix the damn roads’ – that’s mild. Comparatively, there were speeches when she used the ‘MF’…I think if she thinks it makes her one of the boys or something like that. That’s all we can come up with. It’s highly inappropriate for a public official, I think, to swear officially. My mom always taught me that if you’re resorting to swear words, that’s because you don’t have enough of a handle on the English language to use the proper word,” Fritze said.
Watch the full interview:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
