President Donald Trump on Saturday finally donned a protective face mask in public, four months after the pandemic began and after more than 130,000 Americans have died. The president, who had repeatedly defied guidelines and foregone a mask in public settings because he said it would “send the wrong message,” wore the mask during a visit to Water Reed Hospital. He had previously mocked Joe Biden for wearing a mask and retweeted a tweet saying masks represented “silence, slavery, and death.” Aides have recently been begging him to wear one, however, and he told Sean Hannity in a phone interview earlier this week that he would probably put a mask on for the Walter Reed visit. Coronavirus cases across the country, particularly in Florida, Texas, and California, are surging, breaching three million this week after breaking the daily record multiple times in successive days.
