Trump doesn’t — then briefly does — wear mask in stands at Army-Navy football game as Covid rages across U.S.

President Donald Trump didn’t wear a mask for a while whereas standing intently to West Point cadets and Naval Academy midshipmen — all of whom wore masks — at the Army-Navy football game on Saturday.

Trump, who was hospitalized in early October after contracting the coronavirus, additionally didn’t wear a mask when he presided over the coin toss earlier than the game at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.

Neither did the game’s referee throughout the coin toss, which Navy received by appropriately calling tails.

The 121st assembly on the football gridiron between the 2 service academies was performed after coronavirus deaths set a one-day document of three,309 Americans, pushing fatalities this 12 months from the pandemic in the U.S. to greater than 297,000. On Saturday, the variety of coronavirus instances thus far in the U.S. this 12 months reached 16 million.

After the coin toss, Trump walked into the stands on the Army aspect of Michie Stadium, the place he was surrounded by cadets sporting masks.

The lame-duck president placed on a mask at some level throughout the game’s first quarter whereas he was in the stands, the place he stood not removed from a cadet dressed in an Army mule mascot outfit.

But the president, who on Friday evening touted the emergency use approval of a coronavirus vaccine, had taken off his mask by the point he walked out of the stands.

And he didn’t wear a mask when he went into the stands and stood with the Navy midshipmen. With Trump in the stands was White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who additionally was not sporting a mask. Meadows was identified with the coronavirus in early November.

Twitter customers condemned the commander in chief for not setting a great instance for the cadets and midshipmen at the game, the 121st football assembly between the 2 service academies.

“Trump was the only person at the Army Navy game not wearing a mask! Protect our troops damn it!,” tweeted one individual.

Another wrote, “He cares for no one but himself.”

Trump’s failure to wear a mask regardless of federal well being officers urging all Americans to take action is constant together with his near-constant refusal to placed on a facial protecting throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, even as dozens of individuals in his orbit have examined constructive for coronavirus.

In addition to Meadows, Trump’s spouse, his sons Barron and Donald Trump Jr., marketing campaign supervisor, the White House press secretary, the Housing and Urban Development secretary, and the Republican National Committee’s chairwoman are amongst those that had Covid in latest months.

Trump’s private lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who’s overseeing his marketing campaign’s botched authorized efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the presidential election, was launched simply days in the past from a Washington, D.C., hospital after testing constructive for the coronavirus. Before that, Giuliani’s son Andrew, who’s a White House particular assistant to Trump, had coronavirus.

Trump left the game early, earlier than the second quarter had ended.

He is predicted to depart the White House on Jan. 20, regardless of his frantic authorized and rhetorical efforts to disclaim a Biden victory on Monday in the Electoral College.

Biden is projected to win 306 electoral votes, 36 greater than wanted to clinch the presidential race.

As Trump was en path to West Point Saturday, a federal decide tossed out his lawsuit looking for to invalidate Biden’s win in Wisconsin’s in style election.

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to let Texas’ legal professional normal file a lawsuit on to that court docket that sought to undo the election outcomes exhibiting wins for Biden in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.