Pandemic politics: Maskless Trump visits Michigan Ford plant
Visit comes during feud with governor
YPSILANTI TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Pandemic politics shadowed President Donald Trump’s trip to Michigan on Thursday to highlight lifesaving medical devices, with the president and officials from the electoral battleground state clashing over federal aid, mail-in ballots and face masks.
Trump visited Ypsilanti, outside Detroit, to tour a Ford Motor Co. factory that had been repurposed to manufacture ventilators, the medical breathing machines governors begged for during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But his arrival came amid a longrunning feud with the state’s Democratic governor and a day after the president threatened to withhold federal funds over the state’s expanded vote-by-mail effort. And, again, the president did not wear a face covering despite a warning from the state’s top law enforcement officer that a refusal to do so might lead to a ban on Trump’s return.
All of the Ford executives giving Trump the tour were wearings masks, the president standing alone without one. At one point, he did take a White House-branded mask from his pocket and claimed to reporters he had worn it elsewhere on the tour, out of public view.
“I did not to want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it,” Trump said.
For a moment, he also teasingly held up a clear shield in front of his face.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said that mask wearing isn’t just Ford’s policy but it’s also the law in a state that’s among those hardest hit by the virus. Nessel said that if Trump refused to wear a mask Thursday “he’s going to be asked not to return to any enclosed facilities inside our state.”
“If we know that he’s coming to our state and we know he’s not going to follow the law, I think we’re going to have to take action against any company or any facility that allows him inside those facilities,” Nessel told CNN.