The reason why Trump now wears a mask 1:43
Editor's Note: SE Cupp is a CNN political commentator and host of "SE Cupp Unfiltered." The opinions expressed in this comment are his alone. See more opinion articles on cnne.com/opinion.
(CNN) - In presidential politics it is difficult to measure greatness. There is a general sense of a president's stature measured by his accomplishments and established in the context of the challenges he faced. We have a general feeling that Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan were great not only in their temperament and tone, but also in the considerable circumstances in which they ruled.
It is much, much easier to measure weakness, smallness and failure. And in the case of President Donald Trump, we can tragically measure his failure in the American lives lost during this pandemic. The cost of Trump's pathological insecurity, oversized ego, and incompetence of rank is a failure to provide national leadership that could have prevented at least some of the approximately 140,000 covid-19 deaths in the United States.
That's because it took a lot of people - and months of conversation - for the President to finally publicly and unequivocally promote the practice of wearing a life-saving mask in public places.
- READ: Trump's backward steps in the face of the pandemic show his fears ahead of the elections
On Monday night he tweeted, as if he just found out about the idea during a golf game and apparently without any irony: "We are United in our effort to defeat China's Invisible Virus, and many people say that wearing a mask is patriotic when you can't distance yourself socially. There is no one more patriotic than me, your favorite president! ” The black and white photo accompanying the tweet showed Trump wearing a face mask with the presidential seal in the corner.
Leaving aside countless polls showing that he is certainly not our favorite president, far from it, this is a popular cause that we all wish he had taken up much, much earlier.
Biden leads intention to vote with 55%, according to survey 2:37Instead, we saw him steadily and smugly resist doctors' orders, including his own, to wear a face mask in public, refuse while touring small and large businesses, hold press conferences, meet with veterans, and speak to hundreds of people at their rallies.
He spent months pretending a kind of macho ambivalence towards masks, and once said: "This is voluntary, I don't think I will do it." She strangely insisted that she refused to use one in public simply to confront the media: "She had one in the back, but she didn't want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it," she said after touring a Ford plant in. Michigan. Risking his life to "defeat" the press is a show of strange strength.
He even went so far as to discourage the use of face masks, calling them "double-edged swords" and mocking former Vice President Joe Biden for wearing one, because I suppose real men make their friends, family and coworkers sick.
- READ: OPINION | With a mask and everything, Biden crushes Trump
Now, suddenly, Trump suggests wearing a mask means caring about the country, something Biden, the Democrats, and most Republicans in Congress have known for months.
Of course, Trump could still back off. He was wearing a mask for the first time in public when he visited sick military personnel at Walter Reed Hospital earlier this month, but he rejected the idea of a national mandate for the masks in an interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News , which aired on Sunday. "I disagree with the claim that if everyone wore a mask, it would all go away," Trump said.
Still, as painful and belated as Trump's attempt to lift his position in the polls is, Monday's tweet and gesture are much more than just empty symbolism.
Trump's most loyal supporters will do what he says, no matter how rude, damaging, or deranged, as he himself pointed out in his famous theory about a hypothetical Fifth Avenue shooting.
If you're lagging behind wearing a mask now and that encourages voters to wear them in states like Texas, Florida and Georgia, where the virus is on the rise, this is very, very good news for the rest of us.
- MIRA: Hospitals in Florida convert tents into intensive care units to serve the thousands of patients admitted by covid-19
Because he was ultimately responsible for turning the wearing of face masks into a culture war, and one of the dumbest, counterproductive, and downright embarrassing of our lives, he is ultimately the only one who can end that fever and return the meaning to the mask denialists.
I hope you tweet it every hour of every day. I hope that you put that mask, with its striking presidential seal, on all the Hercian waves. I hope you will sell branded masks at every gathering and at the Republican Convention. Because ultimately, even though it took too long, you can do something to help save lives.
coronaviruscovid-19masks
