President Donald Trump jabbed at Reuters reporter Jeff Mason during a Monday press conference, asking him several times to remove his mask so that he could hear him better.
Mason refused to take off the mask, instead saying that he would just try to speak loud enough for the president to understand him through the mask. (RELATED: Umpire Ejects Nats’ Manager From Game, Says He Would Have Tossed Trump Too: ‘But I’d Still Vote For Him’)
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“Go ahead,” Trump opened the press conference for questions by calling on Mason, and after listening for a few seconds, made it clear that he couldn’t understand anything he was saying.
“You’re going to have to take that off. Just — you can take it off, please,” Trump said. “How many feet are you away?”
“I’ll speak a lot louder,” Mason protested, still somewhat muffled by the mask.
“Well, if you don’t take it off, you are very muffled. It would be a lot easier —” Trump pushed back.
“Is that better?” Mason tried again.
“It’s better, yeah,” Trump said, visibly annoyed. “It’s better.”
Mason went on to ask about last week’s story from The Atlantic, which claimed that Trump had called wounded veterans “losers.” He said some people were having difficulties accepting his denials because of disparaging things he had said about the late Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain.
Trump responded by saying, as he has before, that he and McCain had not gotten along and that this was no secret.
“You know what? I lived with him, he lived with me,” Trump explained. “We had different philosophies. I think my philosophy is right. It has turned out to be right. But I wasn’t a fan. I respect people, and I respect a lot of people. That doesn’t mean I necessarily have to agree with them, and I didn’t agree with him on a lot of things.”
Trump then turned his ire on The Atlantic, calling the entire story a “hoax” and listing a number of those who had come out to deny the story as well.