Trump Wouldn’t Wear a Mask During the Pandemic Because It Messed Up His Makeup: Report

If you haven’t buried the memories of 2020 deep into the far recesses of your brain, you probably remember that Donald Trump did not do a great job handling COVID-19. From suggesting Americans inject household cleaner into their veins to allowing his son-in-law to take a leading role in the crisis response, it truly felt like the president of the United States’ stupidity was going to get us all killed. (And in some cases, it did.) Now a new account reveals that it wasn’t just his stupidity that put people at risk of illness and death; it was his vanity and narcissism too. 

The Guardian reports that in her forthcoming memoir, Enough, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson reveals that Trump refused to wear a face covering during a May 2020 visit to a Honeywell factory—where workers were masked and a sign in the area he toured read “Attention: Face Mask Required in This Area. Thank You!”—because he was worried about his makeup coming off. Specifically, the bronzer that he appears to trowel on daily: 

Trump’s…antipathy to masks, and its effect on willingness to mask up among his ardent supporters, was established early in the pandemic. Notably, Hutchinson describes a visit to a mask-making factory in Phoenix, Arizona, in May 2020, in the chaotic and frightening first months of the COVID onslaught…. Trump told reporters he tried a mask but did not wear it after consulting the company chief executive. Hutchinson writes that in fact Trump “decided on a white mask,” then asked staffers what they thought. “I slowly shook my head,” she writes. “The president pulled the mask off and asked why I thought he should not wear it. I pointed at the straps of the N95 I was holding. When he looked at the straps of his mask, he saw they were covered in bronzer.” Trump’s reliance on heavy makeup is well documented.

“Why did no one else tell me that,” he snapped. “I’m not wearing this thing.”

“The press would criticize him for not wearing a mask,” Hutchinson writes, “not knowing that the depth of his vanity had caused him to reject masks—and then millions of his fans followed suit.”

Elsewhere, Hutchinson reportedly recounts Trump joking with then chief of staff Mark Meadows about possibly having COVID following the first debate with Joe Biden—when, in fact, a test three days prior had reportedly shown he did have COVID, meaning he more than likely should have stayed home. In his own memoir, Meadows claimed that while Trump had tested positive three days earlier, he had shown up at the debate because a subsequent test had been negative, even though his symptoms had appeared to worsen. Days later, the president was hospitalized at Walter Reed. (Trump previously called Meadows’s account “fake news.”)

And, of course, that wasn’t the only time the then president allegedly showed a flagrant disregard for people’s health. Per The Guardian: 

In her memoir, Hutchinson also describes other scenes before and after Trump’s COVID bout in which he also showed disregard for his own safety and that of those around him. On Thanksgiving Eve 2020, Hutchinson writes, a group of Pennsylvania legislators, brought to the White House by Rudy Giuliani as Trump sought to contest his defeat in the election by Biden, were tested for COVID shortly before meeting the president. Several tested positive. Hutchinson prepared to take only the guests who tested negative to the Oval Office, only to be ordered by Trump: “I said everyone! Bring them all! Bring them all now!”

Doctors who overheard “immediately urged me to push back,” Hutchinson writes, but she told them she “was not in the business of defying the president’s orders.” Sean Conley, then physician to the president, “reluctantly agreed” and told the COVID-positive guests to wear masks. “When everyone had filed into the Oval Office,” though, Trump “instructed the masked guests to take off their masks. He assured them it was more important for him to see their beautiful faces, said he was not worried about contracting the virus.” Trump, Hutchinson writes, said that because he had recently been infected, he did not fear contracting COVID again.

A true leader!