Trump Offers Conflicting Messages After Biden Urges Nationwide Mandate: Masks Could Be ‘Not So Good’ But ‘What Do You Have to Lose’
President Donald Trump responded to Joe Biden’s call for a nationwide mask mandate with conflicting messages around masks: While he said his administration urges Americans to wear them, the president also confusingly claimed “maybe they are not so good” nearly five months into the pandemic.
“My administration has a different approach,” Trump said, referring to Biden and Kamala Harris. “We have urged Americans to wear masks and I emphasized that this is a patriotic thing to do. Maybe they are great and maybe they are just good, maybe they are not so good, but frankly, what do you have to lose? You’ve got nothing to lose.”
CDC guidelines clearly say that masks “help prevent people who have Covid-19 from spreading the virus to others.”
Earlier on Thursday, the presumptive Democratic 2020 ticket Biden and Harris called for a three-month mandate for masks to be worn nationwide for people who are outside.
“Every governor should mandate mandatory mask wearing,” Biden said. “The estimates by the experts are it will save over 40,000 lives in the next three months if people act responsibly. It’s not about your rights, it’s about your responsibilities as an American.”
Trump attacked Biden’s push for a mandate on Thursday, speculating that he did it because “I guess he thinks it’s good politics.” Trump has radically changed his rhetoric from dismissing mask-wearing as “political correctness” for the first few months of the pandemic to encouraging mass over the last month-and-a-half. Earlier this month, his campaign wrote in an email, “I don’t love wearing them either. Masks may be good, they may be just okay, or they may be great.”
“We want to have a certain freedom, that’s what we are about,” Trump said on Thursday. “At the same time we also understand that each state is different and is facing unique circumstances.”
“We will continue to urge Americans to wear masks when they cannot socially distance, but we do not need to bring the full weight of the federal government down on law-abiding Americans to accomplish this call,” he added.
Watch above, via Fox News.
