trump mask walter reed july 11
Trump wears a mask for first time in front of press pool
02:21 - Source: CNN

Editor’s Note: Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM radio’s daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show” and a columnist for The Daily Beast. Follow him @DeanObeidallah. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion articles on CNN.

CNN  — 

On Saturday, we learned how many Americans had to die from Covid-19 before President Donald Trump would wear a mask in public: At least 134,000. But Trump deserves zero applause for finally allowing himself to be photographed wearing a mask, which he did while on a visit wounded service members at Walter Reed hospital.

Dean Obeidallah

You don’t praise a President for wearing a mask after his own administration’s health experts had been urging all Americans to do so since April – a message that Trump unforgivably undermined both by his actions and by ridiculing those wearing a mask.

It’s undisputed that wearing a mask in public slows the spread of Covid-19 and in turn saves lives. That’s why on April 3, Trump’s own coronavirus task force reversed an earlier guideline and recommended that Americans wear masks. At the time of this new mask guidance, approximately 7,000 Americans had died from the coronavirus and there were over 275,000 confirmed cases of the virus on U.S. soil. (Currently, nearly 135,000 Americans have died and there are over 3.2 million cases of Covid-19 in the United States.)

Trump’s campaign to undermine his own administration’s recommendation to wear a mask began that very day, at the very press conference, with Trump stating, “I’m choosing not to do it,” adding, “but some people want to do it and that’s okay.” And thus was born Trump’s politicization of a life-saving measure during a deadly pandemic. Trump was sending a message to his millions of supporters that he was choosing not to wear a mask and telling them they didn’t need to either. This helps explain why a late May poll found a stark partisan divide in mask wearing, with 64% of Americans believing everyone should wear a mask in public – but only 40% of Republicans agreeing.

As the virus continued to spread and the death toll climbed, Trump went as far as mocking some who wore masks. During a May 26 press conference, he publicly ridiculed a reporter for wearing a mask, stating he was only doing so “to be politically correct.” At the time, there was slightly less than half the number of Covid-19 cases in the United States (1.69 million) as there are today. And the very next day, as our nation reached the gruesome number of 100,00 dead from the coronavirus, Trump shared a tweet mocking the presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden for wearing a mask, prompting Biden to respond by calling Trump “an absolute fool.”

Since then, health officials have urged Americans to wear a mask, with the Trump administration’s own infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci stating on May 27, in what could be seen as a subtle jab to Trump, “I want to protect myself and protect others, and also because I want to make it be a symbol for people to see that that’s the kind of thing you should be doing.”

In late June, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo publicly urged Trump to don a mask. “Let the President lead by example and let the President put a mask on it.” Cuomo also pleaded with Trump to follow New York’s lead and sign an executive order directing Americans to use face coverings, a measure Cuomo did in the Empire State back on April 15.

Even Republicans, including Vice President Mike Pence on June 28 increasingly began to encourage masks. Former GOP Vice President Dick Cheney put on a mask in a photo shared by his daughter Rep. Liz Cheney on social media on June 26 that read, “Dick Cheney says WEAR A MASK.”

Yet through this all, Trump refused until Saturday to wear a mask in public. And even then it appeared Trump was only doing so because he was in a hospital, saying that masks “have a time and a place.” Trump also added, “I’ve never been against masks,” which of course flies in the face of his past actions and comments.

Imagine if Trump on April 3, when his administration first recommended wearing masks – a time when the US Covid-19 death toll was 7,000 – had loudly embraced mask wearing in words and actions? How many fewer infections would our nation be dealing with today and how many fewer families would be mourning a loved one killed by this virus? We can get some idea of what might have been an answer to this grim question by looking at projections from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) , which estimates that universal masking could save 45,000 lives by Nov. 1.

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    We will never know with certainty about what could have been changed in the past. But there’s zero doubt that if Trump did the right thing, it would have made a difference for the better. Masks are only part of a containment strategy, but Trump’s undermining of the recommendation on face coverings only made the consequences of this deadly pandemic worse. And this may very well turn out to be Trump’s most reprehensible and unforgivable act as President.