jews d
Truth T
Squad

in
the

Bill Schuette goes low,
accusing Whitmer of
terror sympathy.

RON FRENCH & CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY
MICHIGAN TRUTH SQUAD

EDITOR’S NOTE:
As part of the Detroit Journalism
Cooperative, the Jewish News
receives content from the nonpartisan
Center for Michigan’s Bridge maga-
zine. Periodically, during the lead-up to
the Nov. 6 election, the JN will be run-
ning Bridge magazine’s Truth Squad
feature on issues of particular interest
to the Jew ish community.

he Michigan Republican
Party and GOP gubernato-
rial candidate Bill Schuette
have attacked the Democratic team
of governor candidate Gretchen
Whitmer and lieutenant governor
candidate Garlin Gilchrist II, say-
ing the Democratic team wants to
abolish ICE and “sympathizes with
terrorists.”
Truth Squad rates the claims mis-
leading. It’s also worth noting that
this issue, which Republicans and
their standard-bearer have spent
much of the past few weeks cynical-
ly pandering to voters on, has little
to do with a governor’s job duties or
improving Michigan’s future.

THE CLAIMS

The party and Schuette made a
series of claims in several ads and
press releases recently; those claims
were condensed into a 15-second
video and accompanying tweet that
Schuette sent out Sept. 7.
Schuette says Whitmer and
Gilchrist are so extreme they are
“opposing immigration enforce-
ment,” “sympathizing with terrorists
(and) attacking law enforcement.”
This is a classic example of
stringing together the very real

statements of their opponents to
reach conclusions that both dis-
tract and mislead voters.
The ICE claims are based on
a 16-second video, taken by a
Republican campaign tracker, at
a June 30 rally in Lansing protest-
ing family separations along the
Mexican border. At the end of the
rally, the person recording the
video asks Whitmer if ICE should
be abolished.
First, Whitmer says ICE’s family
separation actions along the bor-
der were “fundamentally cruel and
unconstitutional and undemocratic
work.”

When the man interrupts her and
asks again if ICE should be abol-
ished, Whitmer responds, “Yeah, I
think our governor should step up.”
“We should abolish ICE, do you
think?” the videographer asks
again.
Whitmer nods and walks away.
Next, Republicans unearthed
nine-year-old tweets from Gilchrist
in which he said he was tired of
people “kissing Israel’s ass.” He
hoped then-President Obama
would put an end to the “‘Israel-
can-do-no-wrong’ approach” and
described Hamas as “a legitimately
elected party that only rose to
power b/c of Israeli aggression &
Western complicity/enablement.”
Hamas is a radical Islamic
Palestinian nationalist movement
that has long called for the destruc-
tion of Israel. Hamas won legisla-
tive elections in Palestine in 2006.
The U.S. is a strong ally to Israel
and deems Hamas a terror group,
as do many Western nations, cit-
ing suicide bombings and mortar
attacks that killed hundreds of
civilian and military targets in
Israel starting in the mid-1990s.
The criticism after Gilchrist’s
tweets circulated online was furi-

continued on page 22

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September 20 • 2018

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