President Trump and first lady Melania Trump greeted a group of Girl Scouts at the White House this afternoon during a pandemic response event and neither one of them wore protective face masks.
It was business as usual for the couple as they flouted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations to social distance and wear facial coverings to help prevent the spread of coronavirus.
The Trumps were holding hands when they arrived at the Rose Garden for the presidential recognition ceremony, where Trump handed certificates to individual Girls Scouts and posed just inches away from them for photos.
The event was held to recognize and honor those who have helped with the pandemic response, and while the girls were wearing face masks, some of the adult attendees did not.
Trump also opted not to cover his face on Thursday when he traveled to Pennsylvania to visit Owens & Minor Inc.
The medical distribution facility has sent millions of N95 masks and other protective gear to hospitals and health care workers across the country
The visit marked the second time he wasn’t pictured without a facial covering as he traveled outside of the White House to visit companies helping the battle against the coronavirus.
Aside from Trump and his chief of staff Mark Meadows, everyone else wore masks, including the factory’s leaders and Trump’s son-in-law, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner.
The mask has become the ultimate symbol of this new cultural and political divide.
For Republicans, where the mask is often seen as the symbol of a purported overreaction to the coronavirus, mask promotion is a target of ridicule, a sign that in a deeply polarized America almost anything can be politicized and turned into a token of tribal affiliation.
Despite some people ignoring the safety precautions, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams and U.S. International Development Finance Corporation CEO Adam Boehler set an example by wearing masks and bumping elbows to greet each other instead of shaking hands.
President Trump has refused to wear a face mask throughout the pandemic, even after several White House staffers have tested positive for coronavirus.
Now the first lady appears to be following her husband’s lead — and going against her own advice.
Just five weeks ago she took to social media to share a photo of herself wearing a face mask while urging Americans to wear cloth face coverings in public settings and practice social distancing when possible.
Trump supporter and Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham warned that “social control over large populations is achieved through fear and intimidation and suppression of free thought” and “conditioning the public through propaganda is also key, new dogmas replace good old common sense.”
In Washington, mask-wearing has become deeply political and inconsistent. The White House is divided along some familiar lines.
In early April, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first issued its recommendation that Americans wear “cloth face coverings” — because surgical masks are still in short supply — Trump immediately blurted out that he wasn’t interested.
“With the masks, it is going to be a voluntary thing,” Trump said at a White House briefing on April 3. “You can do it. You don’t have to do it. I am choosing not to do it. It may be good. It is only a recommendation, voluntary.”
Face coverings are not usually for personal protection. Unless the mask has a filter, like an N95 mask, the CDC says it won’t offer protection from possibly inhaling the coronavirus.
But in situations where social distancing is harder to do, like a workplace or grocery store, a mask reduces the ability of an asymptomatic infected person to spread the virus.