Trump campaign encourages base to wear face masks. ‘Something we should all try to do’
President Donald Trump is now supporting the use of face masks to quell the coronavirus pandemic — even asking his base to wear them.
In an email his re-election campaign sent to supporters Monday, Trump said “we have nothing to lose, and possibly everything to gain” by wearing masks.
“We are all in this together, and while I know there has been some confusion surrounding the usage of face masks, I think it’s something we should all try to do when we are not able to be socially distanced from others,” the president said. “I don’t love wearing them either. Masks may be good, they may just be OK, or they may be great.”
He later added, “Why not give it a shot!”
Trump has changed his personal stance on wearing face masks in the past month. He tweeted a photo of himself July 20 wearing a mask and said it is “patriotic” to wear them.
He wore a mask in public for the first time the previous week on a visit to a military hospital, the Associated Press reported.
Trump said he wouldn’t be wearing a mask in April, according to Newsweek, after the CDC issued its recommendation to wear masks “in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain.”
“I just don’t want to wear one myself,” Trump told reporters at the time. “It’s a recommendation, they recommend it. I’m feeling good. Somehow, sitting in the Oval Office behind that beautiful resolute desk, the great resolute desk, I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens, I don’t know. Somehow, I don’t see it for myself. I just don’t.”
Trump visited mask plants in Arizona and Pennsylvania in May without wearing a mask, McClatchy News reported. Weeks later, he did not wear a mask to a Michigan Ford factory despite warnings from the Michigan Attorney General and Ford Motor Company, McClatchy News also reported.
Dozens of states have instituted mandates that require residents to wear face masks while in public. A July 26-27 survey by The Hill and HarrisX shows 82% of Americans support a national mask mandate.
Trump shot down the idea of a national mask mandate when interviewed by Fox News’ Chris Wallace last month.
“I want people to have a certain freedom, and I don’t believe in that. No, and I don’t agree with the statement that if everybody wear a mask everything disappears,” Trump said.
This story was originally published August 4, 2020 at 10:09 AM with the headline "Trump campaign encourages base to wear face masks. ‘Something we should all try to do’."