- President Donald Trump mocked Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for wearing a mask.
- “If I were a psychiatrist, right, you know I’d say, ‘This guy’s got some big issues,'” he said at a packed campaign rally Thursday night.
- Trump also mocked Utah Sen. Mitt Romney for marching with Black Lives Matter protesters while also wearing a mask.
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President Donald Trump mocked Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden at a Pennsylvania campaign rally Thursday night, saying the former vice president enjoyed wearing a mask too much.
“Did you ever see a man who likes a mask as much as him?” Trump said.
Trump, who rarely permits himself to be seen wearing a mask in public, chastised Biden’s habit of letting his mask hang from his face as he gives speeches.
“It gives him a feeling of security,” Trump said, adding: “If I were a psychiatrist, right, you know I’d say, ‘This guy’s got some big issues.'”
In the middle of his attack on Biden’s mask use, Trump also advised rally attendees to wear masks themselves — especially ahead of the upcoming Labor Day holiday.
“Look, I’m all for it, we have a big weekend, distance on the weekend, and all of that stuff,” Trump said at the rally, held outdoors at the Arnold Palmer Regional Airport. “And wear your mask when you’re close together, and wash your hands and all that stuff.”
Medical experts overwhelmingly agree that face masks help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
REUTERS/Leah Millis
The president first publicly wore a face-covering on July 11 during a visit to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
In June, however, he told The Wall Street Journal Americans wear face coverings to show their disapproval of him and in April, he also said he won’t personally follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidance on wearing masks. And in May, Trump retweeted a Fox News commentator mocking Biden for wearing one.
During the rally, Trump repeatedly praised his own handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has so far infected over 6.1 million Americans and killed more than 186,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.
He asserted that had it not been for the pandemic, he would have not needed to campaign to handily win reelection.
“We’re going up and [Biden is] dropping like a rock in water, and before the China virus, this election was over, now I had to go back to work,” he said, using a racial slur for the coronavirus. “And we’ve done a great job on it. We don’t get the credit.”
Trump also mocked Republican Utah Sen. Mitt Romney for marching with Black Lives Matter protests while wearing a mask.
—Emily Ngo (@emilyngo) September 3, 2020
In June, Romney marched with a group of evangelical Christians to the White House, said he was protesting “to end violence, to end brutality, and to make sure that people understand that Black Lives Matter.”
“He had a lot of mask on,” Trump said.