When President Donald Trump wore a face mask in public for the first time last weekend, his supporters were exultant.
"Goodnight, Joe Biden," tweeted Boris Epshteyn, a campaign adviser. "Game on," declared Sebastian Gorka, an official who recently rejoined the administration. Campaign manager Brad Parscale simply tweeted a photo of the masked president touring Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., with the familiar Trump slogan #AmericaFirst.
With all the crowing, you'd think Trump and his orbit had long seen wearing a mask as a no-brainer and political win. But Trump's journey to don a mask is far more circuitous than what his allies portray.
