Joe Biden Surrenders: ‘Up to Them’ if People Want to Wear Mask on Plane

President Joe Biden said it was up to individual passengers to decide whether or not they wanted to wear a mask on a plane, despite his administration’s failed effort to extend the mask mandate.

During a trip to New Hampshire, Biden was asked by a reporter whether he believed that people should still wear masks on planes, even after a federal judge ruled against the mandate extension.

“That’s up to them,” Biden replied shortly.

When asked if he would challenge the ruling, Biden suggested he still had to talk to the Centers for Disease Control about the subject.

“I haven’t spoken to the CDC yet. Thank you,” he said.

The president chose to wear a mask on Air Force One on Tuesday even though a federal judge on Monday overturned the mask mandate. The White House also required reporters and staff traveling with Biden to wear a mask, even though the Transportation Security Administration said mask mandates would no longer be enforced.

Videos and photos of cheering air travelers emerged on social media after the announcement, as they ditched their masks and celebrated returning to normal despite the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden’s response was slightly different than that of White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who noted to reporters on Tuesday that the videos of celebrating passengers were anecdotal, noting that “anecdotes are not data.”

“There are still a lot of people in this country that want to have masks,” she added.

Last week the Biden administration tried to extend the mask mandate for airplanes and public transit through May 3, arguing the need for more time to analyze the “data” and the “science” behind new variants of the coronavirus.

Biden has been a long-time proponent of the government enacting masking mandates throughout the coronavirus pandemic, repeatedly scolding Americans who expressed frustrations about wearing a mask and calling it a “patriotic duty.”

“I think it’s part of your patriotic duty,” he said in January about mask-wearing, although he admitted, “it’s not that comfortable” and “it’s a pain in the neck” to wear them.

“About one-third of Americans report they don’t wear a mask at all,” Biden said at the same time sadly.

He pleaded for Americans to keep wearing masks, warning of future variants.

“I know that we all wish we could finally be done with wearing masks, I get it. But they are a really important tool to stop the spread of especially a highly transmittable omicron variant,” he said.