Updated June 27, 2020, 9:52 a.m.
US President Donald Trump is still too vain to wear a face mask. His followers cheer him for it, challenger Joe Biden calls him a “fool”. The dispute is now being dealt with at the highest political level – and thus becomes a symbol in the election campaign.
who Donald Trumps To understand resistance to the protective mask must go back one month in his Twitter feed. Then the US president shared a photo of the former vice president Joe Biden – with sunglasses and black mouth-nose protection.
The photo is headed with the words, “This could help explain why Trump doesn’t want to wear a mask in public.” Biden wants to contest his place in the White House in the November election – and on the way Trump doesn’t miss an opportunity to make fun of his opponent.
When it comes to masking too, he focuses on demarcation. “It’s like his whole face is covered. It’s like he put a backpack over his face,” Trump said in an interview recently. There is little that US political camps don’t argue about – the mask is one further evidence of this.
Mouth and nose protection as a political issue
Mouth and nose protection, which was considered indispensable at the beginning of the pandemic, but now also in the USA recommended to protect others has become another symbol of the division in America and a political issue. Wearing or not wearing a mask has been a topic of conversation for weeks – and again Trump is the focus.
There is no nationwide mask requirement in the United States. Since the beginning of April, however, the US health authority CDC has recommended that healthy people without symptoms should wear cloth masks in public in the fight against the coronavirus. This is especially true where it is difficult to keep enough distance from other people.
Given record levels of new infections every day in multiple states Appeals to citizens are growing louder these days. In cities like the capital, Washington, you can’t get to the supermarket or the hair salon without covering your mouth and nose.
Trump is not wearing a mask
Trump immediately made it clear in April that he had decided not to put on a mask himself. Before every trip that Trump now makes again, it is speculated whether he is wearing one this time – or even being forced to do so.
And Trump is playing the game: During a visit to a factory in Michigan in May, Trump said he was wearing a mask during part of the factory tour, “but I didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it.” Trump couldn’t prevent a photo of the rare moment. A few weeks earlier, his deputy Mike Pence had received criticism when he was the only one without a mask when visiting a clinic and thus disregarded a corresponding regulation of the hospital.
“It’s a personal decision,” Trump’s spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said recently. She also does not wear a mask – after all, she is regularly tested for the virus. Not everyone has this privilege – and in the already bitter discussion about how to deal with the crisis correctly, the attitude of the White House has a signal effect, as has become clear in the past few days.
At Trump’s first campaign appearances since the interruption due to the corona crisis in Oklahoma and Arizona, only a few supporters with masks showed up – even though they gathered in closed rooms, close together.
Trump repeatedly causes irritation when he asks reporters to remove the mask when asking a question. He even thinks it is possible for people with the masks to express their disapproval for him. “It could be, yes. It could be,” Trump said when asked in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
Biden: “He’s a fool”
For Trump’s opponents, the rejection of the mask is an expression of the fact that Trump is aware of the scope of the Coronavirus is still downplaying – despite the more than 125,000 deaths that the United States has to mourn in connection with Covid-19. “He’s a fool, an absolute fool,” Biden said to Trump’s ridicule in a CNN interview. Every leading medical doctor in the world says that one should wear masks. For him, wearing a mask does not stand for strength or weakness, but for “leadership”.
Trump is not a good role model in that he does not think it is necessary to put on a protective mask, said House Speaker, Democrat Nancy Pelosi. “Not to protect yourself when he feels invulnerable, but to protect others. That’s why we wear masks.” Pelosi was long declared a style icon in the crisis. She has always matched her mouth and nose protection to her outfit: she chooses yellow and white dots for the yellow dress and yellow chain, a blue mask for the blue top and white blazer, and a mask printed with cherries for the pink pantsuit.
And the United States would not be the United States if there had not been surveys about whether political opinion played a role in the acceptance of the mask. As early as April, the Gallup polling institute found that significantly more people who described themselves as Republicans or close to the party said they never wore a mask in public (46 percent). Opposing them are 83 percent of Democrats and Democratic-minded respondents who said they always or sometimes wore a mask outside the home.
A recent YouGov poll commissioned by Yahoo found that most Democrats (86 percent) support masking, while most Republicans (54 percent) reject it. An even clearer picture of the rejection has emerged among the Trump voters. (dpa / kad)
Brilliant logic from Donald Trump: If the United States didn’t test, there would be no coronavirus cases in the country. The US President has once again downplayed the dramatically increasing number of infections.
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