A new book reveals why Donald Trump almost never wore a mask during the Covid-19 pandemic, even prior to the development of effective vaccines and treatments for the infection.
He was worried about his makeup, according to Cassidy Hutchinson, who was an aide to Mark Meadows when he served as Trump’s White House chief of staff.
The Guardian reports that her book, Enough, describes Trump’s visit to an Arizona Honeywell facility in May 2020 where he went maskless despite the fact that the facility itself was making them.
Hutchinson wrote that he tried a white mask before the event, then asked staffers for their opinions.
“I slowly shook my head. The president pulled the mask off and asked why I thought he should not wear it,” she wrote. “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.”
He wasn’t happy about that.
“Why did no one else tell me that,” he said. “I’m not wearing this thing.”
Trump was almost never seen wearing one after that, with only a handful of exceptions.
“The press would criticise him for not wearing a mask, not knowing that the depth of his vanity had caused him to reject masks – and then millions of his fans followed suit,” she wrote, according to The Guardian.
Trump has claimed he had a different reason for refusing to wear a mask.
Washington Post journalists Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker said in 2021 he told them it was about “the importance in his mind of looking strong, looking healthy, looking impenetrable.”
“Enough” will be released on September 26.