| BREAKING NEWS |
President Trump pivoted from rosy projections about the virus, saying it would “get worse before it gets better” and urging Americans to wear masks. |
| Tuesday, July 21, 2020 5:57 PM EST |
“Get a mask,” said Mr. Trump, who has been reluctant to wear them in public himself, at his first virus-focused news conference in weeks. “Whether you like the mask or not, they have an impact. They will have an effect and we need everything we can get.”
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President Trump abruptly departed on Tuesday from his rosy projections about the coronavirus, warning Americans from the White House briefing lectern that the illness would get worse before widespread recovery.
“It will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better,” Mr. Trump said. “Something I don’t like saying about things, but that’s the way it is.”
In his first virus-focused news conference in weeks, Mr. Trump appeared before reporters to defend his track record, which has been widely criticized for his tendency to downplay the severity of the pandemic. Appearing without Vice President Mike Pence, Dr. Deborah Birx or Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, key members of his White House coronavirus task force, Mr. Trump also implored citizens — especially young people — to wear masks.
“Get a mask,” said Mr. Trump, who has been reluctant to wear them in public himself. “Whether you like the mask or not, they have an impact. They will have an effect and we need everything we can get.”
Mr. Trump’s comment urging Americans to wear masks was a stunning departure from his past comments on wearing them. In recent weeks, he has disparaged masks as unsanitary and suggested that people who wore them were making a political statement against him.
In an interview shortly before Mr. Trump’s news conference, Dr. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said that he had not been invited to attend and defended himself against comments Mr. Trump had made in a Fox News interview Sunday, when he called him “little bit of an alarmist.”
“People have their opinion about my reaction to things,” Dr. Fauci said in the interview on CNN on Tuesday afternoon. “I consider myself more of a realist than an alarmist.”
At the White House, Mr. Trump detailed what he said was data that put the United States in a better position to defeat the virus than other countries dealing with the pandemic. At one point, he repeated the false claim that the United States has a lower fatality rate than “almost everywhere else in the world.” It has the tenth highest case fatality rate out of 20 countries most affected by the coronavirus, and the third highest rate of deaths per 100,000 people, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Mr. Trump also claimed “no governor needs anything right now,” contradicting the public accounts of a few governors. Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon told PBS last night that “we need help with testing supplies and equipment” while Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland warned of testing shortages earlier on Tuesday.
Asked about a tweet he sent a day earlier, in which he declared mask-wearing as “patriotic,” Mr. Trump did not explain why he often declined to wear one in public.
“If you’re close to each other, if you’re in a group, I would put it on when I’m in a group,” Mr. Trump said. But he did not directly answer when asked why he had not worn a mask during a small group gathering at the Trump International Hotel in Washington the evening before, and appeared to toggle back and forth between his own feelings about mask-wearing as he spoke.
“I’m getting used to the mask and the reason is, think about patriotism. Maybe it helps,” Mr. Trump said.
But even as he adopted a new tone, the president continued to maintain, without evidence, that “the virus will disappear.”
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