In an upcoming interview with Fox News, Donald Trump stated that he will not issue a nationwide mandate for people to wear masks.
Fox News anchor Chris Wallace asked Trump if he would consider instituting a mandate, to which Trump replied “No, I want people to have a certain freedom, and I don’t believe in that, no.”
In the interview Trump also said that he disagrees with a statement by Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where he asserted that “if all of us would put on a face covering now for the next four weeks, six weeks, we could drive this epidemic to the ground.”
“I don’t agree with the statement that if everybody wear a mask everything disappears,” Trump said. “Dr. Fauci said don’t wear a mask, our Surgeon General, terrific guy, said don’t wear a mask. Everybody was saying don’t wear a mask. All of a sudden everybody’s got to wear a mask, and as you know, masks cause problems too, with that being said, I’m a believer in masks. I think masks are good.”
The only time Fauci ever said not to wear a mask was in the early stages of the pandemic in order to save them for medical workers. However, since the virus has drastically progressed, Fauci and a number of other medical experts have told people to wear masks in order to slow the spread of the virus.
This comes just a week after Trump was spotted wearing a mask at a military hospital while visiting wounded soldiers. Trump said that he was in a hospital setting because he was in a hospital.
“I think when you’re in a hospital especially in that particular setting, where you are talking to a lot of soldiers, people that in some cases just got off the operating table. I think it’s a great thing to wear a mask. I’ve never been against masks, but I do believe they have a time and a place,” Trump told reporters ahead of his visit last Saturday.
