When does it stop? When do Americans finally get a belly full of a president who, as coronavirus deaths hit 100,000 in this country, mocks wearing a mask and makes it his newest "politically correct" insult.
On Tuesday, during a news conference in the Rose Garden, Trump asked a reporter, "Can you take it off, because I cannot hear you," referencing the face mask.
"I'll just speak louder, sir," the reporter responded.
"OK, you want to be politically correct. Go ahead," Trump replied. The reporter refused to take the mask off.
"Politically correct?" It is Trump's own administration that is urging Americans to don face masks in public as a hedge against the viciously contagious novel coronavirus.
But Trump has too much false pride. He wants to be macho. Before the Rose Garden show, Trump didn't wear a mask on Memorial Day, and he mocked Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, for wearing one in public at a Memorial Day wreath-laying ceremony.
"Joe Biden can wear a mask, but he was standing outside with his wife, perfect conditions, perfect weather ... . And so I thought it was very unusual that he had one on," Trump said.
And still before, Trump dissed Ford executives who encouraged him to wear a face mask during his visit to one of the company's factories. Trump chose not to wear a mask near photographers because he "didn't want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it."
And he certainly doesn't want to lead the country in any kind of a reasonable, rational, safe way.
Biden in a Tuesday interview with CNN's Dana Bash, said Trump is "an absolute fool to talk that way," and is fueling a cultural opposition to wearing masks when "every leading doc in the world is saying you should wear a mask when you're in a crowd."
Biden went on: "This macho stuff, for a guy - I shouldn't get going, but it just - It costs people's lives. It's costing people's lives."
He added that Trump's position amounts to "stoking deaths."
We agree. Trump told us in 2016 that he could shoot somebody on 5th Avenue and get away with it.
Now he's shooting thousands. And it's wrong.
Presidential historian Jon Meacham was only slightly kinder in his criticism.
"To quote the former Vice President, that's foolish. ... He [Trump] has managed to weaponize the deaths of 100,000 people. Think about that for a second. This is is a political weaponization of very basic public safety, public health guidance from the government he was elected to lead," Meacham told MSNBC.
Dr. Anthony Fauci last week was nicer still. After all, he can do more for America by staying on the White House's coronavirus task force than by being ousted by the president.
Nonetheless, Fauci implored Americans to wear face masks in public and called for a cautious approach to reopening the U.S. Both of those comments are at odds with Trump's push to have America quickly return to normalcy.
Fauci told CNN he believes that wearing a mask, though it is not "100% effective," is a valuable safeguard and shows "respect for another person."
He said he wears a mask because "I want to protect myself and protect others, and also because I want to make it be a symbol for people to see that that's the kind of thing you should be doing."
Even Fox News' Sean Hannity is pleading for mask wearing. On air he criticized young people cramming a pool on Memorial Day weekend for not observing social distancing or wearing masks: "Please wear the mask for your mom, dad, grandma, grandpa," Hannity said.
Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman wrote last week that he thinks Trump accidentally created a culture war over the masks and now doesn't know how to get out of it and still save face.
"It's as if he fell into a culture war he knows he's losing and would like to withdraw from, but he can't quite bring himself to do it. He's a slave to his own character flaws," wrote Waldman, noting that helping others with collective action "is a sentiment that is completely alien to Trump. ... This is the man who said not paying his taxes 'makes me smart,' as though anyone who contributes to their country is a sucker."
But Trump also surely realizes that stirring conflict on masks only reinforces the growing belief that his response to the pandemic has been inadequate, Waldman continues. "But he can't help himself. He pictures himself in a mask and recoils from the threat to his self-image, thinking it will make him look weak. He sees Biden in a mask and instinctively lashes out. He's constantly pulled back and forth between reason and impulse."
Waldman is right.
And so is Meacham.
So is Biden.
Trump is a fool. But he's more. He is an absolute danger to all of us and to our country.