Trump promotes masks as ‘patriotic’ before mingling without one at event

President had declined to wear mask in public even as pandemic reached record highs

Video from an congressional candidate’s fundraiser in Washington shows Donald Trump mingling with a small crowd without a mask – even as he finally began wearing one in public after months of resistance.

Mr Trump appeared at a fundraiser for Madison Cawthorn, a young congressional candidate in North Carolina who defeated a Trump-backed contender in his recent primary – thereby breaking the president’s perfect endorsement record.

In Mr Cawthorn’s video of the fundraiser, held at the Trump International Hotel near the White House, he is enthusiastically greeted by various high-profile guests, including South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham – also unmasked – and the president’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who shakes his hand saying “you can touch me”.

Mr Trump did not appear to be carrying a mask in either hand, and Mr Cawthorn himself was not wearing a mask either.

It has been several months since Mr Trump first endorsed the use of face masks to combat the spread of coronavirus, albeit at wearers’ discretion, saying that he did not imagine himself wearing one.

He more recently hinted that he might do so in public, saying that when he had tried one out in private it had made him look “like the Lone Ranger”. It was only on a visit to Walter Reed hospital on 11 July that he first wore one in public, paving the way for a gung-ho tweet yesterday in which he called it “patriotic” to wear a mask where social distancing is impossible.

However, anti-mask sentiment is deeply embedded and growing among certain of his supporters, some of whom view mandates to wear them as an insidious assault on individual freedom of choice.

A few even subscribe to unfounded conspiracy theories that masks can kill by oxygen deprivation or that they can “activate” the virus in a wearer’s immune system.