Chris Hayes Points Out The Glaring Flaw With Trump Base’s Anti-Coronavirus Mask Stance
Chris Hayes on Friday dropped some truth bombs on President Donald Trump, his supporters and the right-wingers who continue to pour scorn on wearing face masks that aim to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
The host of MSNBC’s “All In” noted how “not wearing a mask has kind of become a sort of weird, culture war virtue signaling by Trump people.” Trump himself has not worn a mask during recent briefings and tours of factories. GOP lawmakers and anti-lockdown protesters have also failed to wear them.
But, Hayes explained, the anti-mask brigade (who he noted are “very much in the minority”) in fact appear to be obliviously working against their stated desire to ease lockdown restrictions and reopen the country.
He spelled out why there is “nothing stupider” they can do:
But for Donald Trump’s own stated aims, for the stated aims of those protesters, and all the right-wingers out there who think they’re the ones, the vanguard of opening up America and getting American capitalism cracking again, there is nothing stupider, nothing more counterproductive you can do than turn not wearing a mask into some right-wing badge of honor.
“The mask is your friend,” Hayes continued. “If the stated goal here is to open up the American economy and get people back to work and achieve some level of normalcy, something we all desperately want, there is really good evidence that everyone wearing a mask can really help us in that project.”
Hayes acknowledged he doesn’t like wearing a mask because it fogs up his glasses and makes him feel claustrophobic.
But he does it for the bigger picture, he said.
“We are facing a pandemic that has ravaged everyone’s life,” Hayes concluded. “The easiest, lowest-hanging fruit to make things at least somewhat better, the smallest, most trivial thing is: Let’s all wear masks.”
On its website, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends “wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain” and “especially in areas of significant community-based transmission.”
More than 88,000 people in the U.S. have now died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said Friday that the nationwide death toll could hit 100,000 by June 1.
Trump, meanwhile, continues to push for the reopening of the country, despite case numbers still rising and against the advice of public health officials.
Check out Hayes’ monologue above.
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
