Brit Hume hit back at critics who have criticized him for making fun of former Vice President Joe Biden donning a black mask during a Memorial Day service.
“Biden, like anybody else wearing a mask, looked ridiculous, and the mask he had on with his dark sunglasses … made him look especially ridiculous,” Hume said Tuesday on Fox News’s The Story with Martha MacCallum.
Hume came under fire after President Trump retweeted his tweet mocking the way Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, looked wearing black masks covering most of their faces.
“This might help explain why Trump doesn’t like to wear a mask in public. Biden today,” Hume tweeted with a photo of Biden on Monday. Biden has since changed his own Twitter profile picture to show him wearing that mask.
Hume said it was unnecessary for Biden to wear a mask to prevent the spread of COVID-19 at the service, despite guidelines put in place by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommending members of the public to wear face coverings. The Fox News contributor also called the debacle over whether one should wear a mask “largely political.”
“People who tend to be conservative and/or support Donald Trump tend to think that the danger of this outbreak has been overblown, and people who think it’s absolutely terrifying and that we are all might likely to die tend to be people who do not support Mr. Trump and are not conservatives,” Hume said.
Biden called Trump “an absolute fool” for his retweet of Hume mocking him. The likely Democratic presidential nominee also said him wearing a mask is a way of him leading by example for the rest of the country.
Trump has frequently sported the personal choice not to wear a mask in public appearances. Hume suggests Trump’s retweet of his sentiment toward Biden on Monday meant he agreed with him that masks are unflattering.
“[Trump’s] obviously very, very concerned about his appearance,” Hume said. “When he looks at the picture of Joe Biden, he thinks Biden looks ridiculous, and he kind of does. He didn’t want to look that way. The fact that he retweeted that tweet of mine, which I certainly didn’t expect, suggests that he agrees with what I said. This is why he doesn’t want to wear a mask. He doesn’t want to look funny.”
