Mask or No Mask? WH Chief of Staff Says ‘Certainly, a National Mandate Is Not in Order’

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows believes the question on whether masks should be mandated on a federal level should actually be left up to the states.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, Meadows appeared on “Fox & Friends” Monday where he said, “As we look across the country, obviously, the narrative is the COVID cases are rising, but testing is rising exponentially.”

“We’ve now tested almost 10 percent of our country and when we look at masks and wearing a mask, that’s done on a location basis when you can’t have social distancing,” he continued.

Meadows, who previously served as a U.S. representative, then said, “But certainly, a national mandate is not in order. We’re allowing our governors and our local mayors to weigh in on that.”

There has been a push for a federate mandate on masks, including from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who previously told NPR, “As long as we’re faced with this crisis, masks should be mandatory.”

“In fact, the reason the CDC hasn’t made it mandatory is because they don’t want to embarrass the president, or insult the president, whatever it is,” she added.

Meadow also addressed the president’s recent 99% remarks, where Trump claimed, without evidence, that 99% of coronavirus cases in the country is “totally harmless.”

During Monday morning’s interview, Meadows defended Trump’s claim, as he said, “When you start to look at the stats and look at all of the numbers we have, the amount of testing we have, the vast majority of people are safe from this.”

See Meadows’ comments below:

“Now we have tested, almost 40 million people. By so doing, we show cases— 99% of which are totally harmless — results that no other country can show because no other country has testing that we have,” Trump said on Saturday at the White House. “Not in terms of the numbers, or in terms of the quality.”

His claim came as many people across the country celebrated the Fourth of July.

The U.S. is continuing to see an increase in the number of confirmed coronavirus cases, as there are more than 2.9 million, as of Monday morning. Several states recently reported a rise in cases and hospitalizations, as IJR reported.