Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer has apologized for feeding a Dorito chip to a social media influencer who dropped to her knees after Roman Catholic organizations accused the Democratic politician of insulting their religion by mocking the sacrament of communion.
“I would never do something to denigrate someone’s faith,” Whitmer said in a statement that her office provided to the Michigan television news station WJBK on Friday.
She explained that the stunt in question – captured on video with popular TikTok content creator Liz Plank – was meant to promote legislation signed by president Joe Biden in 2022 that is colloquially known as the Chips Act and provided $280bn to research as well as manufacture semiconductors. But it was all “construed as something it was never intended to be, and I apologize for that”, she said.
On the video, Plank genuflects before Whitmer, who then places a Dorito chip in the influencer’s mouth. The governor caps the scene off by gazing at the camera while she wears a hat supporting fellow Democrat Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz in November’s presidential election.
The Michigan Catholic Conference – which has clashed with Whitmer over her support of abortion rights – joined other church groups in condemning the governor’s video with Plank.
A statement Friday from the conference’s chief executive officer, Paul Long, accused Whitmer and Plank of “specifically imitating the posture and gestures of Catholics receiving the Eucharist”.
Long’s statement alluded to how Catholics believe the wafers used for the sacrament of communion literally transform into the body of the crucified Jesus Christ, adding: “It is not just distasteful or ‘strange’; it is an all-too-familiar example of an elected official mocking religious persons and their practices.”
Whitmer subsequently issued her apology and said she had taken time to speak with the Michigan Catholic Conference.
People that WJBK described as “Democratic sources with knowledge of Whitmer’s participation in the video” also made it a point to tell the station that the video was part of a viral social media challenge that involved awkwardly feeding friends on camera.
In his statement, Long added: “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 has been Michigan’s governor since 2019. She had previously been considered a possible candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination after Biden ruled out running for re-election and endorsed Harris to succeed him.
But Whitmer ultimately ruled herself out, has been a prominent supporter of Harris and recently made headlines by calling Donald Trump “just deranged” after the Republican nominee boasted that women would no longer be thinking about abortion if voters gave him a second presidency on 5 November.
Michigan stands among one of a handful of vital swing states that is expected to decide Harris’s race against Trump. Biden only won the state by 154,000 votes in 2020 after it had backed Trump in his electoral college victory four years earlier.
