‘Awful,’ ‘Reckless,’ ‘Heartbreaking’: CNN Panel Condemns Trump Over Mask-Free Balcony Photo Op

Still-infected President Donald Trump drew sharp condemnation from a CNN anchor and its chief medical correspondent over the recklessly unsafe photo op stunt he pulled upon returning to the White House from Walter Reed hospital.

On Monday, Trump was discharged from the hospital after 72 hours and flew back to White House. Upon arrival, he walked up to the White House balcony on the South portico while wearing his mask but seeming to have some trouble breathing. But before entering the building, though, he turned around and then removed his mask —revealing he was wearing his trademark bronzer make-up underneath — for roughly a minute as photographers and videographers scurried around him filming. Trump eventually turned and entered the White House with no mask on.

As the pool video of the moment played, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Erin Burnett, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta reacted in astonishment at the president’s utter disregard for danger his infection posed to those around him.

“It doesn’t look like it but the president does still have very much coronavirus, as he just walked into the White House,” Collins pointed out to Burnett and Gupta.

“Right. He does. And of course, you know, somewhere in his course of the virus here. Right? And we all know you can get sick and feel a lot better and get extremely sick again,” Burnett noted. “His own doctors have said he’s not out of the woods. But certainly he has the virus. So he can transmit it. And what he just did, what he just told Americans it’s okay to do when you have coronavirus, is to not wear a mask. That’s what he just did.”

“Sanjay, I would like to say nothing surprises me at this point. But that was awful,” Burnett added.

“It was just reckless. And it’s heartbreaking to think that someone who clearly now has a contagious deadly virus, that person happens to be the President of the United States, is showing such reckless behavior and disregard for the people that are around him,” a grim-faced Gupta said. “As everybody I’m sure who watches your show knows by now, you wear a mask to protect those around you. So he goes up there, he takes off his mask. I’m just watching everything. Someone runs up there to take his picture, has a mask on. But again, the president, who we know has coronavirus, is not wearing a mask. I mean, he should be in isolation. He should not have left the hospital. The doctors said today, as you point out, ‘he’s not out of the woods, that we are in uncharted territory.'”

“If he’s going to go inside the residence, maybe that’s where he’s going to isolate. I don’t know. But at that point Kaitlan was raising this issue. At that point, if anybody comes in contact with him they need to be in personal protective equipment,” Gupta explained. “I mean, if he was in the hospital still, whenever the doctors went to go see him, they’d be in personal protective equipment. You’re getting a very different picture here by seeing the president like this. Doctors look at this and say what’s going on inside of him, what’s the illness all about? We know he has an infection with this coronavirus. We know that that infection, that coronavirus can be very contagious, which is why people take great pains to protect themselves in the hospital.”

It’s a very different…and incorrect message,” Gupta emphasized as footage of Trump pulling off his mask played.

“This is what he did. This is the moment. This is what he produced it for,” Burnett noted, calling out the obviously orchestrated nature of Trump’s move, which echoed an irresponsibly unsafe tweet from earlier on Monday. “He wants the image to be I’m strong, this virus is nothing, his tweet today, feeling better than I did 20 years ago, don’t be afraid of covid, don’t let it dominate your life.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.