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From admitting to pandemic overreach and TikTok elitism, Gretchen Whitmer might also have “pulled a Newsom” and fled a snowpocalypse.

Over at CNN, Chris Wallace has fallen on inconsequential times. Jumping to CNN with the expectations of broadened fame on that network’s explosive new streaming service, he has been in the shadows ever since CNN+ literally exploded. There was a long stretch where the channel tried to figure out what to do with Wallace and for reasons exceeding my untrained-in-cable-news-network brain, placing him in his original Sunday morning realm after Brian Stelter vacated was not seemingly an option.

So the former Fox News star has been toiling with a barely acknowledged talker on early Sunday evenings on Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace? It has been a question generating little in the form of curiosity, and one thing that is probably assured is talking with Gretchen Whitmer is unlikely to generate hype. 

Sat down with @CNN’s Chris Wallace at @Umich to discuss the work we’re doing to move Michigan forward. If you want to hear about what we’re doing to deliver for Michiganders tune in Sunday at 7.

I’ll see you there!😉 pic.twitter.com/u4VwEBL7Af

— Governor Gretchen Whitmer (@GovWhitmer) March 11, 2023

On Sunday, Wallace invited the Michigan Governor to his show and Whitmer was at least surprisingly candid in one segment concerning the infamous pandemic response in her state. Candid, but not entirely honest. She brought up one of the many controversial decisions made during the COVID outbreak: her call to restrict residents from being permitted to buy seeds. To this day, it was a ruling that defied common sense.

“We didn’t want people, you know, all congregating around the gardening supplies. It was February in Michigan, no one was planting anyway…”

MICHIGAN GOV. WHITMER ON COVID LOCKDOWNS: "We had to make some decisions that in retrospect don't make a lot of sense, right? […] We didn't want people, you know, all congregating around the gardening supplies. […] It was February in Michigan, no one was planting anyway…" pic.twitter.com/WyOOAXsegZ

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) March 13, 2023

Well now, this is garbage. Her executive order regarding the matter went into effect two months later than she claims – which would be right at the start of planting season, in truth. The EO restricted sections in stores greater than 50,000 feet in size, which included garden centers. Not only are these not usually portions where people congregate, but these are also usually situated in open-air areas.

You might chalk this up as a quibbling detail, but it is really just another example of a governor who struggles with public perceptions and realities. This past month, her state has endured a severe winter storm blast — one that crippled residents with a duration of going without power, but rather than appear as a leader taking over the situation, she has repeatedly fallen back on her practice of generating negative publicity.

At the time that half a million Michigan residents were without power, Whitmer was spotted out on the town at a musical stage production. Now, this is not to suggest that the governor should not be afforded any type of off-hours enjoyment, but this is a woman who has a perpetual struggle with bad optics, and posing for giddy entertainment shots while citizens are freezing is not a smart call. But she may have compounded this with an ill-advised and ill-timed trip out of state.

One Michigan outlet, citing sources close to the governor’s office, reported that Whitmer had jetted out of Michigan at the time residents were grappling without power. This was a near mirror image, if it plays out, of what we saw taking place in California as Gavin Newsom took his family down to Baja Mexico while Northern California was rocked with heavy snow and outages. As one contact at The Midwesterner detailed: “We have a very close and reliable source to the Governor’s office that has informed us that Gretchen Whitmer was out of town last week traveling to San Diego while her state suffered through storms and multiple rounds of massive power outages.”

Attempts by RedState to get a comment from the governor’s office on Whitmer’s schedule were not answered. As an aside, the governor’s daughter, a University of Michigan student, was on her spring break that same week. This would be an uncomfortable echo to the time that Governor Whitmer had locked down her state during the pandemic but then secreted away to Florida for a family trip, in violation of her own travel restrictions.

Then, just to add to Whitmer’s elitist positioning, the state recently passed a new restrictive ordinance blocking the social media video app TikTok from government devices. Curiously — but not too surprisingly — it was reported that Whitmer’s TikTok account would be exempted from this ban. She posts vital clips about some state business as well as signifying Gal-entines Day and clips of her dog. 

Part of me wants to say that it will take more than an appearance on Chris Wallace’s show to remedy these ongoing issues, but really a flawed governor of Whitmer’s stature might be properly suited for the CNN host these days.