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Donald Trump sent "the worst possible message" by appearing on camera with no mask, Attorney General Dana Nessel says.
Michigan's lesbian attorney general is livid at Donald Trump for not wearing a protective mask while visiting a Ford plant in her state.
Trump was "conveying the worst possible message" by failing to wear a mask in front of the media at the factory in Ypsilanti, Dana Nessel told Wolf Blitzer Thursday on CNN's The Situation Room.
"I am ashamed to have him be president of the United States of America," said Nessel, a Democrat and the first out statewide elected official in Michigan.
Trump had toured the plant earlier in the day. It has been refitted to produce ventilators and personal protective equipment needed in the COVID-19 pandemic. He said he had worn a mask during the tour, which a Ford official corroborated, but he took it off when news cameras were on because he "didn't want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it."
"I hope that the voters of Michigan will remember this when November comes, that he didn't care enough about their safety, he didn't care about their welfare, he didn't respect them enough just to engage in the very simple task, the painless task, the easy task of wearing a mask when he was provided one," Nessel told Blitzer.
"And so I hope that we'll have a new president soon enough who does respect people more than this president does," she added.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had issued an executive order suspending all tours of factories while the pandemic continues, but the state made an exception for Trump's tour of the Ford plant. Whitmer has also signed an order requiring facial coverings in enclosed spaces, as long as there is no medical consideration that prevents a person from wearing one.
Nessel said she's considering legal action against any business that allows people to violate the mask order. "I think that we're going to have to have a very serious conversation with Ford in the event that they permitted the president to be in publicly enclosed places in violation of the order," she told Blitzer. "They knew exactly what the order was, and if they permitted anyone, even the president of the United States, to defy that order, I think it has serious health consequences potentially to their workers."
Trump has so far not been seen in public wearing a mask -- not in his recent tour of a Pennsylvania company that distributes medical equipment, nor in his tour of an Arizona plant that makes medical-grade masks. However, TMZ Thursday uncovered a picture someone shot of him wearing a mask at the Ford plant.
