Former Vice President Joe Biden was mocked by President Donald Trump last night for wearing a large face mask, during an emotionally-charged pre-election debate.
The trouble began when moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump about his own often-ambiguous stance on the effectiveness of wearing a face covering to combat the spread of COVID-19. Trump responded by taking the opportunity to disparage the Democrat candidate for wearing one in public so frequently.
Take a look at a portion of the heated exchange in the video below:
[[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1311120572521287680]]
Per a report by CNN, Trump stated:
“I don't wear a mask like [Biden], every time you see him, he's got a mask.
“He could be speaking 200 feet away from it, and he shows up with the biggest mask I've seen.”
However, not to be outdone, Biden responded dismissively to Trump's criticism of his mask-wearing. Per PEOPLE, he replied that:
"[Trump has been] totally irresponsible the way he’s handled social distancing and discouraging people to wear masks... he's a fool."
Biden added:
"Masks make a big difference. His own head of the CDC said if we just wore masks between now — if everybody wore a mask and social distanced between now and January, we’d probably save up to a hundred thousand lives. It matters."
According to a fact-checking report by CNN, although Robert Redfield, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has emphasized the importance of masks, CNN found no reference with regards to him saying that 100,000 lives could be saved through their usage.
However, in July Redfield stated that:
"I'm not going to comment directly about the President but I am going to comment as the CDC Director that facemasks, these face masks, are the most important, powerful public health tool we have."
He added:
"I will continue to appeal for all Americans, all individuals in our country, to embrace these face coverings," Redfield added. "I've said it, if we did it for six, 8, 10, 12 weeks, we'd bring this pandemic under control."
[[twitterwidget||https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1307041970670501888]]
According to data from the John Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, as of the time of writing, there have been 7,191,062 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the USA since the beginning of the outbreak, and a total of 205,998 deaths.