What Trump's mask can't hide (Opinion)
On Saturday, we learned how many Americans had to die from Covid-19 before President Donald Trump would wear a mask in public: At least 134,000. But Trump deserves zero applause for finally allowing himself to be photographed wearing a mask, which he did while on a visit wounded service members at Walter Reed hospital.
You don't praise a President for wearing a mask after his own administration's health experts had been urging all Americans to do so since April -- a message that Trump unforgivably undermined both by his actions and by ridiculing those wearing a mask.
It's undisputed that wearing a mask in public slows the spread of Covid-19 and in turn saves lives. That's why on April 3, Trump's own coronavirus task force reversed an earlier guideline and recommended that Americans wear masks. At the time of this new mask guidance, approximately 7,000 Americans had died from the coronavirus and there were over 275,000 confirmed cases of the virus on U.S. soil. (Currently, nearly 135,000 Americans have died and there are over 3.2 million cases of Covid-19 in the United States.)
Trump's campaign to undermine his own administration's recommendation to wear a mask began that very day, at the very press conference, with Trump stating, "I'm choosing not to do it," adding, "but some people want to do it and that's okay." And thus was born Trump's politicization of a life-saving measure during a deadly pandemic. Trump was sending a message to his millions of supporters that he was choosing not to wear a mask and telling them they didn't need to either. This helps explain why a late May poll found a stark partisan divide in mask wearing, with 64% of Americans believing everyone should wear a mask in public -- but only 40% of Republicans agreeing.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/what-trump-s-mask-can-t-hide-opinion/ar-BB16Esde?li=BBnbfcQ&ocid=DELLDHP
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even if everyone consistently praises the overgrown man-baby for making boom-boom on the potty.
