Trump wears a mask during visit to wounded service members at Walter Reed
USA-President Donald Trump paid a visit to wounded service members at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Saturday and wore a mask after months of refusing to be seen doing so in public. “I’ll probably have a mask if you must know. I think when you’re in a hospital especially in that particular setting, where you are talking to a lot of soldiers, people that in some cases just got off the operating table.
I think it’s a great thing to wear a mask. I’ve never been against masks but I do believe they have a time and a place,” Trump told reporters ahead of his visit.
Trump was seen briefly in a mask while walking with staff, who also were wearing masks, at the medical center in Bethesda, Maryland. He did not make any remarks while wearing one. This is the first time since the pandemic began that the White House press corps got a glimpse of Trump with a face covering. The President’s decision to wear a mask during his Saturday trip to the medical center comes after months of declining to publicly wear one -- against the recommendations of his own administration’s public health experts. Joe Biden’s campaign responded to Trump’s decision to wear a mask with the former vice president’s spokesman, Andrew Bates, saying the President “wasted” four months discouraging people from wearing masks while Biden “has led by example from the start.” “Donald Trump spent months ignoring the advice of medical experts and politicizing wearing a mask, one of the most important things we can do to prevent the spread of the virus,” Bates said Saturday night in a statement.
(CNN)