Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is “not looking for fights” with President Donald Trump, but Attorney General Dana Nessel thinks she should.

“I took an oath to serve the people of Michigan – all the people. That’s my commitment to you no matter who is in the White House or on the other side of the table in Lansing,” Whitmer said at her seventh State of the State address on Wednesday.

“Yes, I do hope to find common ground with President Trump and work with the Democratic Senate and Republican House on our shared priorities,” she said. “I’m not looking for fights, but I won’t back down from them either.”

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The cooperative tone didn’t sit well with Nessel, who has doggedly pursued partisan lawfare against both Michigan Republicans and the 47^th POTUS. Since Trump took office last month, Nessel has entangled Michigan in numerous legal challenges against several of his policies, from changes to public health funding, to efforts to end birthright citizenship, to the appointment of Elon Musk to vet government spending.

On Wednesday, Nessel leveraged Whitmer’s address to fire shots at Trump, and argue it’s a mistake for the governor “not to acknowledge the existential threat that we’re facing in our federal government right now,” Michigan Advance reports.

Nessel argued Whitmer’s attempts to work with Trump to bring new businesses and jobs to the Great Lakes State legitimizes the president’s policies the attorney general doesn’t like.

Unlike other Republicans, she said, Trump is a “wannabe petty dictator who thinks and fashions himself to be a king.”

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“Donald Trump is a threat to the state of Michigan, and I think the more that we normalize the situation and pretend there’s the ability to negotiate normally with somebody who’s a sociopathic liar and believes they’re a dictator, I think it’s dangerous,” Nessel told the Advance. “And the sooner we all- not just Democrats, Republicans need to recognize it, acknowledge it and push back – you know, the better chance we have of saving our country and our democracy.”

Nessel and other top Michigan Democrats repeatedly insisted last year a second Trump term would come with a national abortion ban and the end of democracy entirely. Both of those predictions have failed to materialize, though Nessel continued the doomsday theme on Wednesday.

“We get a new power plant or a battery plant, and that sounds great, but is it?” Nessel said, followed up with references to the Occupational and Safety Heath Administration and the National Labor Relations Board. “I mean, is it great if we don’t have OSHA any more to protect those workers that are toiling away inside the plant, if we don’t have the NLRB and there’s no collective bargaining anymore?”

“We’re talking about potentially losing all of the rights that we’ve worked so hard to win over the course of the last century – that all being rolled back all at once. Seems to me that’s something we should be talking about,” she said.

Nessel’s obsession with Trump and criticism of Whitmer play out as her office is set to face increased scrutiny from House Republicans over numerous frivolous legal pursuits that have been dismissed by the courts.

“This attorney general is a complete activist,” House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Twp., said in December. “Look, I mean she’s bullied and threatened so many innocent Michiganders, tying them up into criminal proceedings for years and then these cases get dismissed.

“I mean, look at the Flint water crisis and how she bungled that for years and years and then nobody got convicted of anything,” he said. “And then you look at St. Clair Shores, where she started going after some people that made some innocent mistakes on their election process, and then that got dismissed.

“Time after time after time, this attorney general is using lawfare to go after innocent people in Michigan and losing. Look at how that destroys people’s lives being tied up  for years  in criminal litigation, just because you’re Republican and the attorney general has a political agenda against you.”

Hall’s comments followed Nessel’s allegation that the refusal of lawmakers to vote on Democrats’ lame duck bills last session was “literally criminal,” a claim the AG later walked back.

“House Republicans, we’re not going to be bullied by the attorney general. We’re a separate branch of government, and we’re the legislative branch, and under Michigan’s laws and constitution we have the authority to look at her budget. We set her budget,” Hall said.

“And her office is out of control, so there’s a lot of changes we’re going to have to make to her budget to stop her from going after innocent Michiganders time after time after time,” he said. “There will be oversight hearings, trying to get her to justify all of these radical things she’s doing.”

Hall added: “She’s spending your tax dollars to lose frivolous lawsuits. People should be outraged by that.”