Vice President Mike Pence traveled to Michigan’s famous Mackinac Island this weekend to deliver a speech to the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference, and he arrived for the event at the Grand Hotel in a motorcade of eight SUVs, according to the Detroit Free Press.
There’s just one problem, though, and critics and haters wasted no time in it pointing out: motor vehicles have been banned on Mackinac Island for the past 100 years.
First-ever motorcade on Mackinac Island
The Free Press reported that Pence flew to Michigan on Air Force Two on Saturday morning and then rode in a helicopter to the island. His motorcade was shipped there separately prior to his arrival, to be used for the trip from the airport to the hotel and back again.
This was the first-ever motorcade on Mackinac Island, as even when former President Gerald Ford visited the picturesque resort destination in 1975, he and then-first lady Betty Ford traveled about the island in a horse-drawn carriage.
But the Free Press even admitted in a separate article that a presidential vehicle had indeed been previously shipped to the island in case of an emergency, and there are exceptions to the ban for public service and government vehicles.
Cue the outrage
Needless to say, outrage swiftly ensued among the usual suspects — pretty much anyone on the left who already hates Pence and President Donald Trump and will inevitably view everything they do in the most negative light possible.
Detroit-native political journalist Ron Fournier told the Free Press that Pence’s Mackinac motorcade was “obscene” and added that it wasn’t necessary even from a security standpoint — an assertion with which the vice president’s security detail would likely disagree.
However, there were some Michiganders who didn’t lose their minds at the sight of the first-ever motorcade on the island, as they realized that times have changed since Ford visited, and heightened security concerns and stricter protocols these days demand the use of a motorcade for high-ranking officials. Some people even lined the road and waved or displayed a thumbs-up as the vice president drove past.
Vice President Mike Pence in an 8-vehicle motorcade on Mackinac Island, which has banned motorized vehicles for more than a century. pic.twitter.com/yWGGTZ6aAs
— Detroit Free Press (@freep) September 21, 2019
“Huge transgression”
Nonetheless, The Daily Caller compiled a number of explicit, negative, and incredibly vitriolic tweets from Democrat politicians and media figures slamming Pence for bringing motorcade vehicles onto the island where none have driven before.
“Banned for a century people, and here comes the Trump Administration trampling all over it, like they do the U.S. Constitution,” Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib tweeted. “This video of the cars driving on our beautiful [Mackinac Island] makes my stomach turn.”
A political strategist named Rory Cooper suggested the incident could harm the Trump campaign with Michigan voters, while a former Democrat state legislator and registered nurse named Julia Pulver said what happened was a “huge transgression” that would make Michiganders’ “blood boil.”
Ultimately, the haters will hate no matter what, and if Pence hadn’t arrived on the island with a motorcade — no doubt a non-negotiable security requirement of the U.S. Secret Service these days — the left most assuredly would have found something else regarding Pence’s visit about which to lodge a grievance.