The Biden administration is considering a plan that would appear to be a huge waste of resources, which is hardly news anymore. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain told NBC's Lester Holt that discussions are ongoing in the administration to send face masks to every American.
"Yeah, you know Lester, this was an idea that came up last year in the Trump administration," said Klain. "The public health agencies recommended it. The president vetoed it for some reason."
I wasn't there but I assume Trump vetoed the idea because it was stupid. Every American has access to face masks. Stores in most places hand them out to anyone who doesn't have one. You could probably walk off with a whole stack of them. Streets and sidewalks are now littered with face masks nobody wants anymore.
"We want to get this back on track," Klain continued. "We're looking at what can be done to quickly do this with the mask supplies that we have."
Klain said the mass, mask proposal is just part of the Biden administration's "plan" to encourage mask-wearing during the administration's first 100 days.
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain speaks with @LesterHoltNBC about the plan to send masks to every American.
— NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (@NBCNightlyNews) February 4, 2021
"We're gonna do whatever we can to make masks more available to people."
Tune in to @NBCNightlyNews at 6:30 ET / 5:30 CT for more (check your local listings). pic.twitter.com/b0TusxmI2p
It's becoming clear that President Trump did all the heavy lifting when it comes to the pandemic. Trump implemented the travel ban on China, fast-tracked therapeutics, developed vaccines, and helped get vaccination numbers up to about a million doses a day. Biden comes along and all the big and important stuff has already been done. That's what this stupid face mask idea is all about. Biden wants credit for doing something, even if that something is wasteful and unnecessary.
Oh, and it might be a good time to remember that Joe Biden and Barack Obama depleted the national stockpile of face masks and never replenished it. The lack of masks likely contributed to Dr. Fauci advising the public not to wear face masks in the early days of the pandemic.