Pelosi Rips Trump for Not Wearing Mask: ‘It’s a Vanity Thing’

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Wednesday said President Donald Trump is too vain to wear a mask and ripped the president for setting a bad example by not honoring his administration’s guidelines to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

“It’s a vanity thing, I guess, with him,” Pelosi told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell a day after Trump refused to wear a mask at an Arizona Honeywell mask-making plant. “You’d think as the president of the United States, you would have the confidence to honor the guidance that you are giving others in the country. Yes, he should have worn a face mask.”

Pelosi continued: “It’s really another indication that as we tell everyone to wash their hands, 30 seconds, soap and water, top and bottom, wash your hands, hygiene and sanitation very important in fighting this. Apparently, the president has washed his hands of this. He’s just washed his hands… Why should I have a mask when I’m president of the United States?”

As The Hill noted, Trump last month actually “said while announcing the new recommendation that Americans wear facial coverings while out in public that he would not be wearing any himself.”

“I just don’t want to wear one myself. It’s a recommendation; they recommend it,” Trump reportedly said in April. “I don’t know, somehow sitting in the Oval Office behind that beautiful Resolute Desk — the great Resolute Desk — I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens, I don’t know. Somehow, I don’t see it for myself. I just don’t.”

In a New Yorker feature about the different coronavirus outcomes in New York and Seattle, Dr. Richard Besser–the former acting director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—said it is extremely important that there are no mixed messages during a pandemic.

“To maintain trust, you have to be as honest as possible, and make damn sure that everyone walks the walk,” Besser told the magazine. “If we order people to wear masks, then every C.D.C. official must wear a mask in public. If we order hand washing, then we let the cameras see us washing our hands. We’re trying to do something nearly impossible, which is get people to take an outbreak seriously when, for most Americans, they don’t know anyone who’s sick and, if the plan works, they’ll never meet anyone who’s sick.”