Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer has apologized after Catholic organizations accused the lawmaker used Doritos to mock their religion by parodying the sacrament of communion.
The Democratic governor appeared in a video with popular TikToker Liz Plank in which Whitmer fed a Dorito chip to the content creator and podcaster while she kneeled.
@lizplank new interview with big gretch just dropped! 🔥 #michigan #election #politics ♬ dilemma - Galuh
“I would never do something to denigrate someone’s faith,” Whitmer said in a statement provided to local Michigan news station WJBK on Friday.
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According to the governor, the social media clip was intended to promote President Joe Biden’s “Chips Act,” legislation signed in 2022 that allocated $280 billion to researching and manufacturing semiconductors.
The video, she added, was “construed as something it was never intended to be, and I apologize for that.”
Sources described as having “knowledge of Whitmer’s participation in the video” told WJBK that the clip was part of a viral social media challenge involving awkwardly feeding people.
Following the video’s release, several Catholic groups, including the the Michigan Catholic Conference, slammed Whitmer and Plank with the Conference's chief executive officer, Paul Long, directly accusing the pair of “specifically imitating the posture and gestures of Catholics receiving the Eucharist.”
“It is not just distasteful or ‘strange’; it is an all-too-familiar example of an elected official mocking religious persons and their practices,” his statement continued.
Whitmer and the Michigan Catholic Conference have butted heads before over the governor’s support of reproductive rights and abortion access. Prior to issuing a public apology, however, the governor met with the organization.
Still, Long claimed in his his statement, “While dialogue on this issue with the governor’s office is appreciated, whether or not insulting Catholics and the Eucharist was the intent, it has had an offensive impact.”
Whitmer, who became Michigan’s governor in 2019, has emerged as a regular face on the Harris-Walz campaign trail. Her state is an key swing state in the upcoming 2024 election, expected to decide what is predicted to be a neck-in-neck race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
