Ex-White House Aide Reveals Why Trump Refused to Wear Mask During Covid

Donald Trump staunchly refused to wear a mask during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, and a big reason why is that he didn’t want to smudge his makeup, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson has revealed.

Hutchinson worked as the top assistant to Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, and she eventually became a star witness for the House January 6 investigative committee. She reveals Trump’s turning point on masks in her new book Enough, The Guardian reported Thursday.

Trump toured a Honeywell mask-making factory in May 2020, and he sparked criticism for not wearing a mask during the tour. He told reporters he chose not to after the Honeywell chief executive gave him the go-ahead.

But Hutchinson writes that Trump initially chose to wear a white mask, and then asked staffers what they thought.

“I slowly shook my head,” Hutchinson says. “The president pulled the mask off and asked why I thought he should not wear it.”

“I pointed at the straps of the N95 I was holding. When he looked at the straps of his mask, he saw they were covered in bronzer.”

Trump immediately decided to forgo the mask, according to Hutchinson, who wrote, “‘Why did no one else tell me that?” he snapped. “I’m not wearing this thing.”

Trump has regularly been mocked for his distinct orange complexion. People often speculate whether he uses makeup or fake tan to get his skin to that particular shade.

Trump’s refusal to wear a mask backfired spectacularly, and he tested positive for Covid on September 26, 2020. He and Meadows hid his diagnosis for several days and didn’t announce it publicly until October 2. Those six days were just enough time for Trump to infect Chris Christie.

Christie said in December 2021 that it was “undeniable” Trump had given him Covid. He also blasted Meadows for not warning anyone that Trump was sick.

“I would have worn a mask if I knew that,” Christie told PBS. “[Meadows] didn’t tell us.”

“I went into the hospital in the intensive care unit. He didn’t call and tell me. So I think that’s inexcusable.”

David Brooks is getting absolutely roasted over a picture of a burger. It all began on Wednesday evening when Brooks, a political columnist for The New York Times, shared a photo of his meal at Newark Airport on X, formerly known as Twitter:

Brooks claimed that the burger, fries, and liquor cost him $78—a clear sign of why “Americans think the economy is terrible.” It didn’t take long, however, for the internet to pounce on Brooks for the sheer impossibility of the price that he’d suggested.

Author and minor Twitter celebrity Joyce Carol Oates was one of many to jump on Brooks’s claim.

Like Oates, users mostly wanted to know what exactly was in Brooks’s glass… 

… and how many of those he’d ordered before he decided to begin posting his astute economic analysis.

Soon, the Newark Airport restaurant was identified—and a small disclaimer appeared beneath Brooks’s original post with a link to the menu from the restaurant. The reader context noted: “Based on the similar table, glass, chair, sheet and cut of fries, this is the Smokehouse Restaurant in Newark Airport Terminal A. The burger and fries cost $17.”

(The additional reader context then briefly disappeared, despite being very helpful.)

Even the restaurant responded to Brooks’s post, confirming the insanity of his claim. “Looks like someone was knocking back drinks,” the restaurant posted on Facebook. “Bar tab was almost 80% and he’s complaining about the cost of the meal.”

Americans don’t think the economy is terrible because of inflated prices at the airport. But they might be swayed by commentators like Brooks who alternate between touting how great American capitalism is and cherry-picking details from their own upper-class lifestyle as proof that we’re nearing the end.

Airport food is expensive—but it’s not that expensive. Maybe Brooks could use this opportunity to pivot into speculative fiction, but in the meantime, if he ever wants to comment on economic news, he may want to lay off the whiskey first.

Democratic Representative Angie Craig is taking aim at House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the looming Republican-prompted government shutdown with an excellently named bill.

Craig introduced the “My Constituents Cannot Afford Rebellious Tantrums, Handle Your Shutdown Act,” or the “MCCARTHY Shutdown Act,” Wednesday afternoon. The bill would temporarily block the paychecks of Congress members during a government shutdown. Currently, shutdowns do not affect pay for lawmakers, but they stop pay for all other federal employees.

“It’s ridiculous that we still get paid while folks like TSA workers are asked to work without a paycheck,” Craig said in a statement announcing the bill.

The bill is unlikely to pass (or even make it to a floor vote in) the Republican-controlled House, but it makes a major point as the shutdown looms ever closer.

Congress is just days away from its September 30 deadline—and House Republicans can’t even begin debate on the Defense Department appropriations bill. The House failed yet again to pass the bill on Thursday, when five Republicans broke from their party to block a procedural rule to begin debating the appropriations measure.

The Republican Party is in full shambles, and they have begun to turn on each other over government spending. Tim Burchett called his party “very dysfunctional,” while Mike Lawler said it was “pathetic” that Republicans are “throwing a temper tantrum.”

But the farthest-right wing of the House is insisting that they will force a government shutdown unless federal spending is cut dramatically. Part of the reason they don’t fear a shutdown is that it has no consequences for them. As Craig pointed out, they still get paid.

House Republicans failed Thursday to pass a Defense Department budget bill, a sign of how much internal chaos the party is struggling with.

The House rejected a procedural rule to begin debate on the bill by a vote of 212–216. Far-right Republicans Marjorie Taylor Greene, Dan Bishop, Andy Biggs, Eli Crane, and Matthew Rosendale broke from their party to kill the measure.

It was the second failed rules vote in a week on defense appropriations. It is incredibly rare for rules votes like this to fail, an indication of the fact that Republicans are in full disarray.

Mike Lawler, a moderate Republican, slammed his fellow party members. “They have to come to a realization: If they are unable or unwilling to govern, others will. And in a divided government where you have Democrats controlling the Senate, a Democrat controlling the White House, there needs to be a realization that you’re not going to get everything you want,” he said.

“Just throwing a temper tantrum and stomping your feet, frankly, not only is it wrong—it’s pathetic.”

Tim Burchett criticized Republicans for being “very dysfunctional right now.” He then made a rare and shocking admission: “Speaker Pelosi, love her or hate her, she put something out there and they’d rally around it.”

The farthest-right wing of the House has insisted it will block all appropriations bills unless funding is cut dramatically. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was confident Wednesday night that he had the votes to pass the defense bill, which would have been a major step forward in the stalemate. But he failed to convince the last five holdouts, even after a two-and-a-half-hour party meeting.

The danger now is that the House will not reach a resolution by the September 30 deadline. McCarthy has insisted on passing bills with just Republican votes, but given his razor-thin majority, that clearly isn’t always possible.

Even if House Republicans do manage to pass a bill, if it isn’t a clean bill, it will likely fail in the Democratic-controlled Senate. The risk of a government shutdown after the September 30 deadline is looming ever larger.

And Republicans, rather than trying to come together, are turning on each other instead. Most of the Republican holdouts are members of the Freedom Caucus, which was largely responsible for the 15 agonizing rounds of voting for House speaker in January.

McCarthy ultimately won, but only after making multiple concessions to the caucus. One concession was agreeing to restore the motion to vacate, which would allow any single member of the House to call for a vote to remove him. Some lawmakers are threatening to strip McCarthy of the gavel over the spending bills.

There’s a new boss in town: Lachlan Murdoch will take the reins at News Corp and Fox Corp, after his father Rupert Murdoch announced Thursday he was stepping down.

Although he previously fled from both his father’s business and the spotlight, Lachlan Murdoch has slowly made his way back up the ranks over the past nearly two decades. In that time, he has ceased to shy away from making his positions clear.

And if anything, he’s even farther right than his father. Here are five things to know about the new head honcho.

1. He defended the “great replacement theory.”

In 2021, then–Fox star Tucker Carlson did a segment promoting the “great replacement theory,” which the Southern Poverty Law Center defines as a “racist conspiracy narrative [that] falsely asserts there is an active, ongoing, and covert effort to replace white populations in current white-majority countries.”

Murdoch defended Carlson against criticism from the Anti-Defamation League, brushing off concerns that Carlson was promoting the theory. Murdoch argued that Carlson had said, “White replacement theory? No, no, this is a voting rights question.” But considering the racist nature of the conspiracy, it’s hard to see how framing it as “people of color voting” is any better.

2. He doesn’t see an issue with Fox’s programming strategy.

After Carlson was unceremoniously fired in April, Murdoch assured investors that the network’s approach to programming wouldn’t change.

“There’s no change to our programming strategy at Fox News,” he said in a May earnings call. “It’s obviously a successful strategy.”

If by “successful,” he means, “resulting in a slew of defamation lawsuits for spreading lies,” then sure. But Murdoch appears to have stayed true to his word, as host Jesse Watters took over Carlson’s coveted prime-time slot.

3. He helped push 2020 election conspiracy theories.

After the 2020 election, Murdoch said that Fox’s coverage should be “a huge celebration” of Donald Trump. During a pro-Trump rally, Murdoch criticized the Fox reporter for covering it in a way that was “smug and obnoxious.” That reporter was later fired.

In its defamation lawsuit against Fox, Dominion Voting Systems specifically named Lachlan as a key figure in spreading election falsehoods. Dominion said he had “direct” involvement in broadcasting the lies about election fraud.

Rupert Murdoch and other Fox executives have since admitted they knew that the election fraud conspiracies were false, but they continued to allow Trump’s allies to push the theories on air.

4. He used the Ukraine War to attack The 1619 Project.

During a March 2022 speech in Sydney, Murdoch discussed the importance of defending democracy and sovereignty, for instance in Ukraine. He said he was “shocked” to see a poll that found that a “bare majority” of Americans would defend the United States against an invasion.

Murdoch blamed The 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones’s seminal work on slavery and its legacy in the U.S. He said the piece “recast American exceptionalism as racist from inception.”

“It has done great damage,” Murdoch said.

5. He said Fox is the “loyal opposition” to the Biden administration.

A few months after Joe Biden took office, Lachlan Murdoch abandoned all pretense of Fox being a reasonable news outlet. Speaking at a Morgan Stanley investor conference in March 2021, Murdoch said Fox News would act as “the loyal opposition” to the Biden administration.

He reasoned it would be good for the company’s bottom line. “The main beneficiary of the Trump administration from a ratings point of view was MSNBC … and that’s because they were the loyal opposition,” he said. “That’s what our job is now with the Biden administration, and you’ll see our ratings really improve from here.”