Michigan governor appears to be mocking faith

Plank kneels in the video, appearing to hold her hands in prayer, while Whitmer administers the Dorito in the same manner that a priest does when administering the bread that symbolizes the Body of Christ.

Anyone of faith who watched the video would immediately see it as a mockery of the sacred sacrament of Communion. 

Semafor’s David Weigel quickly dismissed the video on X as “a stupid TikTok trend (I repeat myself) that I first noticed when (Stephen) Colbert did it. As more people see it, they’re saying ‘wait is this mocking communion?’ But that wasn’t what the trend was.”

The video is an adaptation of the “feeding someone” TikTok trend, which has become popular with celebrities such as singer Billie Eilish and Kylie Jenner.

However, if you are one of the millions of Catholics in this country who don’t follow celebrity trends on TikTok, you saw what you saw, trend or no trend. What the video was meant to be for the TikTok crowd was not what the faith crowd saw, especially considering the TikTok trend doesn’t usually involve someone kneeling in a prayer-like manner.

Plank took to X to defend her actions, but not exactly in the way you’d expect someone to behave if they were trying to reassure people they were not mocking faith.

“This is the trend weirdos chill out,” she posted next to a video of late-night host Stephen Colbert participating in the “feeding someone” trend with actor Jeremy Allen White.

Calling the faithful weirdos for watching a performance that looks exactly the same as when they receive Communion was probably not the best way to reassure people they weren’t seeing what they were seeing. Conversely, saying nothing, as Whitmer has done so far, is equally unreassuring.

Catholics, who can receive Communion at every Mass they attend, are a significant voting bloc in the Great Lakes states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that collects data on religion, culture, and politics, close to half of Michiganders are white Christians, with nearly 20% of them Catholic. Next door in Wisconsin, nearly a quarter of the voters are Catholic. In Pennsylvania, at least a quarter of the voters are Catholic, and at least half of the congressional delegation is Catholic.

A candidate running for office, particularly the presidency, should know that to win voters who aren’t entrenched in politics, it can be more important to demonstrate shared values than ideological purity. How their surrogates conduct themselves, particularly if they are wearing campaign gear, is just as important.

Currently, former president Donald Trump is winning the overall Catholic vote at 52% compared to Vice President Kamala Harris’s 47%. Catholic voters have shifted dramatically to the Republican Party since former President Barack Obama won the majority of the Catholic vote in the 2008 and 2012 election cycles. Harris further alienated Catholics earlier this fall when she became the first nominee for president since the 1980s to decline to attend the Al Smith Dinner, a unique and celebrated event hosted by the Archdiocese of New York to support regional Catholic Charities.

Catholic Charities is one the largest providers of safe, decent, and affordable housing for people living on the margin in this country, such as homeless seniors, veterans, and others needing temporary and emergency dwellings.

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Paul A. Long, Michigan Catholic Conference president and CEO, said Whitmer and Plank’s skit goes further than the viral online trend that inspired it by specifically imitating the posture and gestures of Catholics receiving the Holy Eucharist, in which we believe that Jesus Christ is truly present.

“It is not just distasteful or ‘strange.’ It is an all-too-familiar example of an elected official mocking religious persons and their practices,” he said. “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.”