When President Donald Trump claimed he had worn a mask in a “back area” of a Ford plant in Michigan on Thursday — but then taken it off because he didn’t want give the media “the pleasure of seeing it” — many assumed he was, as usual, lying.
As it turns out, Trump did don a mask, however briefly.
The Guardian reports: Pictures of Donald Trump wearing a face mask while on a visit in Michigan have emerged. In a video published by Sky News, the US president can be seen wearing a navy blue mask. The images emerged after a state attorney general called Trump a “petulant child” because he allegedly refused to wear the covering during a tour of a plant belonging to the Ford car company. … The Michigan state attorney general, Dana Nessel, had written to the White House saying it was the law in Michigan that everyone should wear a mask in such a setting – an indoor venue with many people in attendance. “The president is like a petulant child who refuses to follow the rules. This is not a joke,” she told CNN, adding that Trump’s behaviour was “extremely disappointing” and that thousands of people in Michigan had died from coronavirus.
Trump shot back at Nessel on Thursday night, marking his third feud in recent days with a female Democrat in Michigan, a key swing state. Nessel also happens to be an out lesbian — a fact which has not been lost on some of Trump’s supporters on Twitter.
Mediaite reports: The president’s social media beef with Nessel came just one day after he attacked — though not by name — Michigan’s Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, while making several false claims in his Twitter rant. Trump inaccurately said Benson, also a Democrat, had gone “rogue” and independently mailed absentee ballots to everyone in the state, an “illegal” act. In fact, Benson had mailed absentee ballot applications to everyone in her state, a move endorsed by the Gov. Gretchen Whitmer administration and in keeping with the state’s constitution, which guarantees that state’s citizens the right to vote by mail. That followed the multiple insults Trump has lobbed at Whitmer, Michigan’s Democratic governor, over the past few weeks, most of which have focused on her insistence on lockdown rules to prevent the further spread of the coronavirus. Whitmer’s performance during the outbreak has earned her high marks, however, as a recent poll fond 64 percent of the state’s residents approve of the job she is doing, 21 percentage points higher than Trump’s own job approval on the Covid-19 outbreak in Michigan. That same poll also found four out of five of Michiganders personally weak masks in public, putting Trump’s behavior in the distinct minority in that state.
