United States President, Donald Trump, said Thursday he’d finally overcome his aversion to wearing masks against the coronavirus — but didn’t want be photographed.
Touring a Ford auto factory in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where workers have converted to building respirators and other medical equipment for fighting COVID-19, Trump held up a mask and claimed to have covered his face earlier.
“I had one on before. I wore one in this back area but I didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it,” he told reporters and photographers covering his visit.
Nearly everyone at the Ford factory was wearing a face covering, in line with company policy and government recommendations on curtailing the highly contagious virus.
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Trump, pushing to get Americans to put the pandemic behind them and reopen the faltering economy, has never worn a mask in public. He previously has said that he doesn’t consider the look fitting his perception of himself as a world leader.
On Thursday, he said the mask “was very nice, it looked very nice.”
Skepticism about the need for masks is rife among right-wing Americans who support Trump.
In more extreme circles, demands by local government or private businesses for the public to wear masks has been interpreted as a conspiracy against constitutional freedoms.
[AFP]
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