Michigan Democrats believe that the state leaders are a not-so-secret weapon in the 2020 election. They see the president’s frequent barbs — he has called Ms. Nessel “the Wacky Do Nothing Attorney General” and Ms. Benson a “rogue Secretary of State” — as helping fuel the anti-Trump bandwagon in the state, which before 2016 had not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988.

“We’re enraged. We’re exhausted,” said Lori Goldman, a Bloomfield Township realtor who started the group Fems for Dems with about a half-dozen suburban Michigan women after the 2016 election. “I’m a woman and I feel the sting of how these women leaders are being treated and called names.”…

The three state leaders are not the only women in Michigan whom the president has targeted. He has also repeatedly criticized Mary Barra, the chief executive of General Motors, over her decision to close American auto manufacturing plants and what he perceived as a slow transformation of some plants to make ventilators for virus treatment.

“Women are sharply viewing it as anti-female,” said Richard Czuba, the founder of the Glengariff Group, a nonpartisan polling firm in Lansing. “I can see him going after Whitmer if he’s worried about her being on the ticket. But he has systemically attacked every prominent female politician in Michigan.”