Published 12:06 IST, July 2nd 2020
Ivanka Trump bats for face-masks & trees; netizens call it hypocrisy for elections' sake
Advisor and daughter to the US President, Ivanka Trump on Thursday shared an image of herself sporting a face mask alongside senior Republican representatives
In contrast to the US President Donald Trump's blatant disregard for wearing face masks, daughter and advisor to the President, Ivanka Trump on Thursday, shared an image of herself sporting a face mask alongside senior Republican representatives. Ivanka along with Republican representatives Kevin McCarthy and Bruce Westerman promoted the use of masks amid the pandemic asking people to 'wear a mask and plant a tree.'
Planting trees is also a controversial topic around Trump on account of his being a climate change denialist, who pulled the US out of the Paris COP21 Accords. However, Ivanka Trump has recently touted the government's efforts to plant a 'trillion trees' - a number so outrageously high that she was panned online over its mathematical impossibility.
It was only last month that Ivanka Trump had defended her father over his resistance to wearing face masks in public saying that everyone around him or in close proximity to him had been instructed to wear a mask. Trump had faced massive backlash in April after he scoffed at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) guidelines asking people to wear cloth face coverings in public settings saying that he wouldn’t be following it.
In a recent interview, however, Trump somersaulted saying that he was 'all for wearing masks' adding that many had seen him wearing one. “I have worn a mask if I'm in a group of people where we're not 10 feet away, but usually, I'm not in that position. Everyone is tested. Because I'm the President, they get tested before they see me," he said in an interview to an American news channel. He also added that he quite liked his look in a face mask since it made him look like "Lone Ranger."
Over the past week, Republican representatives have engaged in damage control over Trump's resistance to wearing face masks in public. Trump has been going on maskless tours and rallies across the US ahead of the US Presidential Elections even as cases of Coronavirus continue to spike in the country.
Both Vice President Mike Pence and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell earlier this week urged citizens to wear a mask at a time when social distancing was difficult. Tennessee Republican Representative Lamar Alexander even called out Trump for not donning a face mask in public, asking him to do so and 'set a good example.'
Updated 12:06 IST, July 2nd 2020