President Donald Trump appeared to blame Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for the lack of a nationwide mask mandate during a town hall on Tuesday.
"The wearing of masks has proven to lessen the spread of COVID. Why don’t you support a mandate for national mask-wearing? And why don’t you wear a mask more often?" a voter asked Trump during the event.
"Well, I do wear them when I have to, and when I’m in hospitals and other locations," Trump replied. "But I will say this: They said at the Democrat convention they're going to do a national mandate. They never did it, because they’ve checked out and they didn’t do it. And a good question is, you ask why Joe Biden – they said we’re going to do a national mandate on masks."
Biden fires back:
Moderator George Stephanopoulos noted that Biden called for governors across the country to implement a mask mandate.
"Well no, but he didn’t do it. I mean, he never did it," Trump said.
Biden pointed out on Twitter that Trump is the president.
“To be clear: I am not currently president,” he tweeted.
Trump claims he “up-played” coronavirus, botches "herd immunity":
Trump repeatedly tried to deflect from criticism of his coronavirus response, at one point insisting he “up-played” the seriousness of the coronavirus despite admitting to reporter Bob Woodward that he “always” tried to “play it down.”
During another point, Trump doubled down on his claim that the coronavirus would just “disappear.”
"It would go away without the vaccine … but it's going to go away a lot faster with it," said, adding that "you'll develop like a herd mentality. It's going to be herd-developed, and that's going to happen, that will all happen."
