Jim Acosta Confronts Mark Meadows For Not Wearing a Mask, Minutes After Meeting With Covid-Positive Trump

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows held a press gaggle Friday morning following news that President Donald Trump had just tested positive for Covid-19. The top presidential aide was successfully presenting a positive demeanor in describing a personal meeting with the commander-in-chief, in which he revealed that both Trump and the First Lady “remain in good spirits” despite the president having “mild symptoms.”

The curiously convivial tone changed, however, when CNN’s Jim Acosta flatly asked “Why aren’t you wearing a mask?”

By any measure, it is a fair and reasonable question given that Meadows just met with someone with coronavirus and was now addressing an assembled crowd, regardless of social distancing and an outside environment that comes with a driveway gaggle.

“I’ve obviously been tested,” Meadows replied. “We’re hopefully more than six feet away and if there’s any concern there from a guidance standpoint — we have protocols in place.”

What then followed was an oddly elliptical word salad of guideline and mitigation verbiage, which added up to making very little sense. Meadows prattled:

“You know, when — when — when early — early on when we first started to tackle the covid-19 battle, we actually did two different things in the white house. A number of contingencies as we looked at not only additional testing but certainly mitigating the risk for social distancings, and private meetings and the likes and I think it goes to the broader question and even with a lot of mitigating factor, Jim, what — what you have is a virus that is contagious, that certainly continues to be regardless of whatever protocol we have, that it has the ability to affect everybody. As you know, the president, we keep a pretty wide circle. All of you that have interacted with him know that so even with the wide circle around the president we find that he’s having to deal with this like so many millions of other Americans and people around the world have had to do.”

President Trump has frequently downplayed the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, has often claimed it would “just go away,” and mocked his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, for frequent (and responsible) mask-wearing. The Trump administration’s own CDC, and numerous public health experts, have implored Americans to wear masks as the best way to abate the spread of the potentially deadly virus.

Apparently, Mark Meadows has not received the CDC memo.

Watch above via CNN.