Michigan will ask President Trump to stay out of “enclosed facilities” in the state if he refuses to wear a mask during his Thursday visit to a Ford plant in Ypsilanti, says state Attorney General Dana Nessel (D).
“Obviously here in Michigan we’ve been particularly hard-hit by the COVID-19,” Nessel said Thursday on CNN’s “New Day,” noting that auto manufacturing facilities have only recently reopened amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Part of the agreement between auto companies and the United Auto Workers union, she added, is that visitors to facilities cover their faces.
“We are just asking that President Trump comply with the law in our state, just as we would make the same request of anyone else in those plants,” she said.
Trump is scheduled to tour a Ford plant that has been repurposed to manufacture ventilators and personal protective equipment.
The president has made two trips outside of Washington, D.C., since late March when the pandemic emerged in force — to Arizona and Pennsylvania — and both times he has rejected his own government’s guidance to wear a mask when out in public. Trump has said that wearing a facial covering is a personal choice and unnecessary for him, since he is tested for the coronavirus regularly.
Nessel said Michigan would have few legal options if the president refuses to wear one in that state either.
“If we’ve learned nothing over the last several years of President Trump in the White House, it’s that he doesn’t have the same level of legal accountability as everybody else,” she said.
However, she said, “if he fails to wear a mask, he’s going to be asked not to return to any enclosed facility inside our state. I know that Ford has asked him to do the same thing, but if we know that he’s coming to our state, and we know he’s not going to follow the law, I think we’re going to have to take action against any company or any facility that allows him inside those facilities and puts our workers at risk.”
Nessel had made similar comments in an open letter to the president published Wednesday.
“While my department will not act to prevent you from touring Ford’s plant, I ask that while you are on tour you respect the great efforts of the men and women at Ford — and across this State — by wearing a facial covering,” she wrote. “It is not just the policy of Ford, by virtue of the Governor’s Executive Orders, it is currently the law of this State.”