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Trump Embraces Face Masks But Rejects National Mandate

Ken Bredemeier

   WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump says he is in favor of Americans
   wearing face masks to help curb the surging coronavirus pandemic, but
   says he will not impose a national mandate.

   "I'm a believer in masks," Trump said in an interview at the White
   House first aired on the "Fox News Sunday" TV show. "I think masks are
   good."

   But Trump, who wore a mask in public for the first time only a week
   ago, told newsman Chris Wallace in the interview conducted Friday: "I
   don't agree with the statement that if everybody wears a mask,
   everything disappears."

   Even as several of the 50 U.S. state governors and big-city mayors have
   imposed mask-wearing mandates in the face of fast-rising coronavirus
   caseloads, Trump said he believes mask-wearing should be voluntary.

   "I want people to have a certain freedom and I don't believe in" making
   it a legal requirement, Trump said in his first Sunday talk show
   interview in more than a year.

   The president noted` that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country's leading
   infectious disease expert, and Surgeon General Jerome Adams both
   advised against wearing a mask in the first days of the virus' spread
   in the U.S. early this year. Both have long since changed their minds
   and repeatedly called for face coverings.

   "Hey, Dr. Fauci said don't wear a mask," Trump said. "Our surgeon
   general-- terrific guy -- said don't wear a mask. Everybody who is
   saying don't wear a mask-- all of sudden everybody's got to wear a
   mask, and as you know masks cause problems, too."

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