Former homeland security adviser Tom Bossert said Sunday that President Trump’s decision to not wear a mask in public “isn’t very useful.”
“Do as I say not as I do isn’t very useful to reinforce what the doctor just said,” Bossert told ABC’s “This Week,” referring to White House coronavirus task force member Deborah Birx’s preceding interview.
Birx, who was interviewed on “This Week” before Bossert, told the network that those who are unable to social distance and are outside, “must wear a mask.”
{mosads}Instead of focusing on “what you can’t do” Memorial Day weekend, Bossert advised the public to wear a mask, wash their hands and keep up social distancing, even if stay-at-home orders have expired.
He also encouraged Americans to “pray and think about those that passed in our former wars for Memorial Day” and “also those that passed in the last three months.”
“100,000 souls have been lost in this country,” he said.
The former Trump adviser’s comments come after the president did not wear a mask in front of the media during his tour of a Ford factory in Michigan that is developing ventilators despite the company’s policy requiring face masks.
A photo, published by the Detroit Free Press, later surfaced of the president wearing a mask while on a tour of the plant. Trump had told reporters at the plant that he wore the mask in the “back area” but “didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it.
The president’s decision sparked backlash among Democrats, with Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) calling Trump a “petulant child who refuses to follow the rules.”