Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney posted a photo of former Vice President Dick Cheney sporting a face mask on Friday and took a shot at the manhood of people who refuse to wear face coverings in a seeming jab at President Donald Trump.
Liz Cheney, the No. 3 House Republican, posted the photo her father as lawmakers push harder for their constituents to wear face masks to limit the spread of coronavirus. Trump has been loath to wear a mask, despite the advice of public health experts.
“Dick Cheney says WEAR A MASK. #realmenwearmasks,” the younger Cheney tweeted Friday along with a photo of her father wearing a mask.
Masks remain a sticking point for some politicians, most notably Trump, even as the number of coronavirus cases climbs past 2.4 million, according to data from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that everyone “should wear a cloth face cover when they have to go out in public, for example to the grocery store or to pick up other necessities.”
But Trump has continued to defy health recommendations and has been reluctant to be seen wearing a mask in public. He recently told The Wall Street Journal that masks are “a double-edged sword” and also suggested that masks are being worn as a political statement, rather than a health precaution, to show disapproval of him.
Some Republican governors, such as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have resisted mandating face masks be worn in public in their states despite new coronavirus peaks in their states. Experts say wearing a face mask or other face covering could reduce the transmission of Covid-19 by as much as 50%.
Cheney’s comments on Friday were not her first to run counter to the President’s decisions in combating the coronavirus.
Cheney said in March that the US must address its health care crisis in order to restore the economy, as some of Trump’s allies pushed to reopen the country despite the threat of the coronavirus pandemic.
“There will be no normally functioning economy if our hospitals are overwhelmed and thousands of Americans of all ages, including our doctors and nurses, lay dying because we have failed to do what’s necessary to stop the virus,” Cheney wrote on Twitter.
In April, Cheney pushed back against a false claim by Trump that he has “total” authority to decide to lift restrictions governors have imposed amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“The federal government does not have absolute power,” Cheney tweeted at the time, though she did not mention the President explicitly.
The Wyoming Republican invoked the 10th Amendment to the Constitution in her tweet, saying, “‘The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.’ United States Constitution, Amendment X.”
Cheney is not alone in calling for mask-wearing. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, whose state of Florida has seen a recent surge of coronavirus cases, said Wednesday that “everyone should just wear a damn mask.”
Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden said Friday that if elected president, he would make wearing a face covering in public mandatory. Last month, Trump and the White House had mocked Biden for wearing a mask outdoors to a Memorial Day event, leading Biden to fire back in an interview with CNN, calling Trump “an absolute fool.”
CNN’s Alex Rogers, Clare Foran, Veronica Stracqualursi and Sarah Mucha contributed to this report.