President Donald Trump slammed former Vice President Joe Biden for proposing a national mask mandate as an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Trump accused Biden of politicizing the Covid-19 outbreak and of neglecting science in fighting the health crisis.
“It’s a shameful situation for anybody to try and score political points while we’re working to save lives and defeat the pandemic,” Trump said during a White House press briefing.
Biden, the Democratic candidate for president, said that Americans must wear a mask when they are in public for the next three months. He urged governors to make mask wearing a mandate.
Trump, who eschewed wearing of masks for months, now supports the idea, although he wants governors to decide on whether to make them a requirement at the state level.
“We have urged Americans to wear masks. We’ve been saying wear them when it’s appropriate,” Trump said. “Maybe they’re great and maybe they’re just good, maybe they’re not so good. But frankly what do you have to lose? You have nothing to lose.”
Reactions of governors
Meanwhile, governors from both Democrat- and Republican-led states throughout the US have mandated the use of masks or postponed reopening plans as cases have increased again primarily in the Midwest and Sun Belt.
However, Trump believes Biden “wants to shut down our economy and close our schools and grind society to a halt.” Trump, who has consistently said lockdowns intended to curb the spread of the virus would do more harm than good, added that Biden is “in favor of locking all Americans in their basements for months on end.”
“We’ll defeat this virus, but not by hiding in our basements, he’s got to come out of his basement. We’ll defeat this virus through a commonsense mitigation effort, shielding those at highest risk and unleashing America’s medical and scientific genius,” Trump said.
Harris
Biden recently announced that his running mate would be Sen. Kamala Harris. The pair has widely criticized the coronavirus response of the Trump administration
“This virus has impacted almost every country, but there’s a reason it has hit America worse than any other advanced nation. It’s because of Trump’s failure to take it seriously from the start,” Harris said in accepting her nomination.
“His refusal to get testing up and running, his flip-flopping on social distancing and wearing masks, his delusional belief that he knows better than the experts — all of that is the reason and the reason an American dies of Covid-19 every 80 seconds,” she said.
The White House did not give any comment on Harris’ speech.
To respond to Harris, Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh pointed out that the president “has been leading the nation through the coronavirus crisis and restricted travel from China, and then Europe, way back in January.”
“Joe Biden called it xenophobic and fear-mongering,” Murtaugh said. “We now know that the President’s decision saved countless thousands of American lives and that Joe Biden would not have done it. If Joe Biden had been president, we would be in a much worse situation today.”
