
President Donald Trump has said he will not consider a national mandate on mask wearing in an interview with Fox set to air Sunday.
When asked whether he would consider instituting a mandate, Trump responded: "No, I want people to have a certain freedom, and I don't believe in that, no."
During the hour-long sit-down, Trump also said he disagrees with the assessment by Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that "if all of us would put on a face covering now for the next four weeks, six weeks, we could drive this epidemic to the ground."
"I don't agree with the statement that if everybody wear a mask everything disappears," Trump said. "Dr. Fauci said don't wear a mask, our Surgeon General, terrific guy, said don't wear a mask. Everybody was saying don't wear a mask. All of a sudden everybody's got to wear a mask, and as you know, masks cause problems too, with that being said, I'm a believer in masks. I think masks are good."
In the early days of the pandemic, public health officials asked people to not wear masks to save supplies for frontline workers, but now both Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, and US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams, have repeatedly called upon Americans to wear masks in public.
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