President Joe Biden was caught maskless Saturday inside a Nantucket store that requires customers wear face coverings.
Photos and reports reveal Biden brazenly disregarded a mask directive at the Murray’s Toggery Shop in Nantucket. Ignoring the store’s large “Required Face Covering” sign on the door compelling customers to don masks upon entrance, the commander-in-chief strolled right in.
Biden not only defied the store’s policy but also Nantucket’s mask mandate. On November 18, the city reinstated the requirement because Nantucket’s coronavirus positivity rate reached the 69th percentile among nearby cities.
Biden’s willingness to freely disregard face-covering rules occurred over Thanksgiving weekend while he and his family vacationed in Nantucket, a “private preserve” for “rich people” that joins “the ranks of other enclaves like Palm Beach, Aspen, the Hamptons and Sun Valley,” as the New York Times described.
The news comes as the coronavirus strain known as Omicron is finding its way from South Africa to nations around the world. It has been detected in Africa, Europe, and Australia.
On Sunday morning, Biden’s top scientist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos it is too early to determine if the White house must seek more lockdowns and mandates due to the variant.
“Should we expect to be seeing more lockdowns, new lockdowns, more mandates?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“It’s really too early to say,” Fauci guessed.
On Friday, Biden mandated travel restrictions on eight countries that showed signs of the latest coronavirus variant. Biden was then bashed for mandating the restrictions after labeling former President Trump’s coronavirus travel restrictions in 2020 as xenophobic and racist.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø