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It takes courage and wisdom to see what's happening clearly and serve your people effectively. Most politicians are not capable of that. Here's a case in point.

CORONAVIRUS STAY-AT-HOME ORDERS STIR PROTESTS NATIONWIDE AMID FEARS OF ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

On March 23rd, Gretchen Whitmer, who is the governor of Michigan, announced it was going to be necessary to lock down her state during the coronavirus outbreak and she explained why she was doing it. Here's what she said.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer: Without additional aggressive measures, soon, our hospitals will be overwhelmed, and we don't currently don't even have enough beds, masks, gowns and ventilators.

We must work together to bend the curve. We must do more to curtail community spread so our health system has a fighting chance.

Today, I'm issuing a stay home, stay safe executive order.

Okay, so she said -- we want to be fair here -- what a lot of people were saying last month, which is, we need to slow the transmission of this so our health care system doesn't fall apart. As we just told you a moment ago, that's what the model said. Models had already factored in the lockdown.

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So, two weeks later, what's happened? Well, Michigan's health care system has not collapsed. Even in Detroit, which is as you likely know, has seen one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks anywhere in the nation.

Many hospitals in Michigan are now discharging more coronavirus patients than they're admitting. In fact, an emergency hospital under construction outside Detroit has slashed its bed count from 1,000 to just 250. Why? The expected number of patients failed to arrive.

Now, that's all great news that you would think Gov. Whitmer, who is supposed to be looking out for the interest of her own people, would be celebrating on television. She is doing just the opposite. She has moved aggressively to seize even more control of her state and the lives of the people who live there. So she bulled forward.

Last week, Whitmer banned all gatherings anywhere, for any reason of any size, including in people's private homes, as if she is allowed to do that.

If Michigan residents own more than one home, Whitmer has banned them from traveling between them, and outside Detroit, it is very common, especially for working-class people, to have a cabin up north. You're not allowed to go there.

And then she kept going. Not only did Gov. Whitmer close most stores in the state, she banned the few that remained open from selling items that she deemed unnecessary.

Gov. Whitmer wants to be the vice president. She wants to be chosen by Joe Biden. That's pretty clear, and she has calculated there is no penalty for petty authoritarianism.

Whitmer: Big box stores will also have to close areas of the store that are dedicated to things like carpet or flooring, furniture, garden centers, plant nurseries, or paint. If you're not buying food, or medicine, or other essential items, you should not be going to the store.

So where did this come from? How did Gov. Whitmer know that paint -- buying cans of paint --- could be deadly? How does not buying cans of paint prevent the spread of the coronavirus?

Well, you'll notice we didn't play the whole clip. But if we did, you would have seen that Gov. Whitmer didn't bother to explain because she had no clue, because she didn't talk to anyone who'd studied it before she made the order. She could have consulted Hendrik Streeck.

Streeck is a German professor who directs the Institute of Virology at the University of Bonn. He has done a lot of research on this, and based on it has concluded that actually, there's very little risk of spreading the coronavirus while shopping or actually even from touching surfaces, contrary to what they told you last month.

Instead, Streeck found almost all the spread of the coronavirus came from "people being closer together over a longer period of time." And that's the kind of behavior that maybe a mask might mitigate -- the ones they told you not to wear.

And by the way, if that's true, then maybe you should think twice before you force people to remain indoors with one another all day, as Gov. Whitmer has.

Now, Sweden has a slightly larger population than the state of Michigan and just like Michigan, it's a mix of larger cities and smaller towns. Sweden has never, unlike Gov. Whitmer and so many American states, adopted the Chinese model, the authoritarian model, in order to contain coronavirus. Yet, so far Sweden has fewer cases of coronavirus and fewer deaths than the state of Michigan does.

Does the governor of Michigan know this? Does she care? No. That suggests it's about science, but it's not. And you know that by now. It's about power.

Gov. Whitmer wants to be the vice president. She wants to be chosen by Joe Biden. That's pretty clear, and she has calculated there is no penalty for petty authoritarianism. In fact, petty authoritarianism might make even mediocre politicians look strong and decisive. That's her bet. She's willing to destroy the people in her state in exchange.

And incidentally, when exactly did Gov. Whitmer becomes so deeply concerned about citizens dying and willing to do anything to prevent it? In 2018, Michigan had almost 2,800 deaths from overdose. It had another 1,500 suicides, more than that. Now, unlike coronavirus, every single one of those deaths might have been preventable.

As it was, they fell disproportionately on the young and the middle age. And yet, Whitmer didn't shut anything down. She didn't even consider closing pharmacies dispensing this poison, asking police to conduct random searches to ferret out drugs and dealers. No. Nor did she say something about China, which is sending all this crap into our country. Not a word.

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As for suicides, if she cared, she could have taken anyone in the state into custody at any time if that person was identified at risk of self-harm. But that wasn't a consideration, either.

Then again, at the time, Joe Biden didn't need a running mate. And CNN wasn't watching.

Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on April 13, 2020.

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