Michigan Gov. 'Smokeshow' Whitmer gets the 'Saturday Night Live' treatment

Apr 26, 2020 at 11:23 am

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Screen grab/YouTube

SNL's Cecily Strong as Gretchen Whitmer.

She's been attacked by Trump's Twitter finger, had protesters gather outside of her home in an event dubbed “Operation Queen's Castle,” and has made national headlines for both her response to the COVID-19 pandemic and for landing herself on Joe Biden's shortlist for vice president. She's Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and according to Saturday Night Live writers, a “smokeshow Midwestern governor nobody heard about 'til a couple of weeks ago.”

In an unaired sketch from Saturday Night Live's second stay-at-home iteration of their live show — which also featured Brad Pitt as infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci — performer Cecily Strong takes on “that woman from Michigan,” who appears in a puffy parka against a wooded outside area while nursing a Labatt's.

“While other govs get cool nicknames like ‘Daddy Cuomo’ and ‘Gavin Choke Me King Newsom,’ Trump refers to me as ‘that woman from Michigan,”’ Strong says. “But I'm not offended because I am proud to be from Michigan, and ‘that woman’ is also what Trump calls his wife.”

The sketch compared “Operation Gridlock,” the massive MAGA-filled protest against Whitmer's stay-at-home order restrictions earlier this month, (which, at the time, prohibited motor boating (nice!) and access to gardening supplies) to “Ted Nugent cosplay.”

“Look, people, it's live free or die, not live free and die,” Strong said in Whitmer's Midwestern drawl.

Strong proceeded to give some helpful protest safety tips for anyone looking to congregate at a time where people are asked to stay home in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus, like, you know, stay home, assuring angry conservatives that they can comfortably call her “a bitch” from the safety of their couch. Other tips included social distancing, suggesting using AK-47s as a distancing measure, and wear masks, just as long as they're not Joker masks or masks with hoods.

Like Whitmer herself, Strong addressed the vice president rumors, assuring Michiganders that the Mitten State is her first priority.

“We're not out of the woods,” Strong said. “And we never will be. We live in Michigan.”

Watch the unaired sketch below.

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