Jerry Falwell Jr. mocked Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s executive order mandating face coverings by photoshopping Northam’s blackface photo onto one.
“I was adamantly opposed to the mandate from @GovernorVA requiring citizens to wear face masks until I decided to design my own,” Falwell said in a tweet posted Wednesday. “If I am ordered to wear a mask, I will reluctantly comply, but only if this picture of Governor Blackface himself is on it!”
The president of Liberty University shared a photo that was widely circulated last year depicting what is alleged to be Northam wearing blackface at a Halloween party in the 1980s while he was a college student.
I was adamantly opposed to the mandate from @GovernorVA requiring citizens to wear face masks until I decided to design my own. If I am ordered to wear a mask, I will reluctantly comply, but only if this picture of Governor Blackface himself is on it!#VEXIT#EndLockdownNow pic.twitter.com/twu7r4rWhd
— Jerry Falwell (@JerryFalwellJr) May 27, 2020
Critics of Northam used the photo, taken from a school yearbook, to question Northam’s fitness for office and called for his resignation.
Northam announced this week that businesses in densely populated Northern Virginia could begin reopening and that all citizens in the commonwealth will be required to wear face masks while in public places.
Police will not enforce the mandate, Northam said. Critics of the order regarding face masks pointed to photos of Northam taking selfies with people in Virginia Beach over the weekend while not wearing a mask himself.
Falwell, a staunch supporter of President Trump, clashed with Northam when the governor first announced statewide lockdown restrictions in March.
Falwell compared the coronavirus to the common flu and never fully closed down Liberty’s campus. Northam responded by saying that “we have heard too many mixed messages … and this is yet another example.”
A lawsuit filed in federal court on behalf of Liberty students argues that Falwell and his school put them in danger.
“Students who lived in on-campus housing were not expressly forced to move out of their housing — indeed, the University purports to remain open while classes have moved online and the University’s President has tried to downplay the significance of the pandemic,” the lawsuit said.
“We really think it’s un-Christian to turn students away and push any problems off on someone else,” the university said in a statement responding to Northam. “Most of our residential campus students are not in the Lynchburg area. Only about 10 percent of our residential students are currently here on campus. Many of those are international students who did not leave the country on Spring Break and have nowhere else to go. The Governor should understand that.”
