Gretchen Whitmer’s unexpected Oval Office invite highlights balancing act with Trump

By Arit John, CNN

(CNN) — Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer visited the White House on Wednesday with a bipartisan delegation to discuss a laundry list of issues affecting her state, including a recent ice storm, funding for an Air National Guard Base and tariffs.

She left with a new problem: Donald Trump’s praise.

The president caught Whitmer off-guard during remarks in the Oval Office, as she stood in the back of the room while he briefly lauded her.

“We’re honored to have Gretchen Whitmer from Michigan, great state of Michigan, and she’s been, she’s really done an excellent job, very good person,” Trump said.

Whitmer was “surprised” she was brought into the Oval Office “without any notice of the subject matter” while Trump signed executive orders in front of the press, according to a spokesperson for the governor.

The White House encounter, four years after Trump lashed out and called her “the woman in Michigan,” comes as Whitmer attempts to walk a fine line between the demands of being a swing state leader and a potential 2028 presidential candidate.

Democrats are facing increasing pressure, and anger, from base voters demanding stronger leadership and a more aggressive stance against the Trump administration. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer faced calls last month to step down after he helped pass a Republican funding bill, while a handful of young progressives have launched primary challenges against Democrats they say aren’t meeting the political moment. Whitmer herself faced strong online criticism from Democrats for standing in the Oval Office while Trump signed executive orders.

The spokesperson for Whitmer said her presence in the Oval Office was not an endorsement of anything Trump did or said during the event.

At the same time, Whitmer’s avoidance of the “resistance” label reflects the political realities of her state, which Trump won in 2016 and 2024. Michigan Democrats, who enjoyed a trifecta for two years, must now work across the aisle with Republicans, who won the state House in November. Whitmer was accompanied to the White House by her state’s Republican House Speaker Matt Hall.

Whitmer’s spokesperson added that the governor viewed the Trump administration’s decision Wednesday to issue a 90-day pause on most of the recently announced tariffs as “a step in the right direction,” though her office is still “concerned about tariffs that will hurt American auto companies.”

Whitmer has been vocal about the political tightrope she’s had to walk since last year’s election, stressing that she doesn’t see herself as a resistance leader.

“I have shared with some of my colleagues from some of the very blue states that my situation here in Michigan is very different than theirs. I’ve got a Republican House of Representatives — majority-Republican House — now to work with,” she told the Associated Press in January. “I’ve got to make sure that I can deliver and work with folks of the federal government, and so I don’t view myself as the leader of the opposition like some might.”

That balancing act has been trickiest when it comes to tariffs, particularly those impacting automobiles and parts. While automakers in her state are against the tariffs, many union members are not against tariffs in general. Democrats widely blasted the tariffs Trump announced this week, ahead of his surprise decision to pause most of them for 90 days, but Whitmer was among a handful of members of her party who offered more measured criticism.

“I understand the motivation behind the tariffs, and I can tell you here’s where President Trump and I do agree: We do need to make more stuff in America, more cars and ships, more steel and ships,” Whitmer said in Washington, DC, Wednesday morning. “We do need fair trade.”

During a speech and a fireside chat with journalist Gretchen Carlson, Whitmer said that she’s not against tariffs outright, but that they should be used as a tool. She also called for a bipartisan approach to “usher in, as President Trump says, the Golden Age of American manufacturing.”

In her remarks, Whitmer also acknowledged the challenging political environment in which she and other Democrats find themselves. Asked how she would respond to Democrats who haven’t bought into her appeals to bipartisanship, Whitmer said she felt she had a “duty, and a hope, to try and get things done.”

“In this moment, it feels like no action comes without loud criticism from one realm or another,” Whitmer said Wednesday morning. “I could demonstrate on the front lawn of the Capitol for four weeks on end and some people would say I hadn’t gone far enough. Just accept the fact that there’s always going to be the critic.”

CNN’s Kit Maher contributed to this report.

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