President Donald Trump, during a White House press conference, told a Reuters reporter to remove his face mask before he'd answer his questions, but the reporter refused.
"You're going to have to take that off," he told White House reporter Jeff Mason. "How many feet are you away? Well, if you don't take it off, you are very muffled. It would be a lot easier."
Mason responded that he would just speak louder. Trump later commended another reporter for sounding "so clear" when he asked his questions without wearing a mask.
Mason's questions centered around Trump's response to an article in The Atlantic claiming he'd called military veterans "losers" and "suckers." Trump retorted when Mason asked him if his comments concerning late Sen. John McCain were proof that would back up the story.
"I've always been on the opposite side of John McCain," said Trump. "John McCain liked wars. I will be a better warrior than anybody, but when we fight a war, we are going to win them. Frankly, I was never a fan of John McCain."
The story, he added, was a "hoax," and its writer, Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg, has a "tremendously bad history."
"The magazine itself, which I don't read, but I hear it is total anti-Trump. He's a big Obama person, a big Clinton person. He made up the story. It's a totally made up story," said Trump, adding that several people who were in Paris with him when he did not travel to a nearby cemetery for a Veterans Day 2018 observance backed up his side of the story.
"I wanted to do it very badly," said Trump. "I was willing to sit in a car for two hours, three hours, four hours. I didn't care. It didn't matter. I had nothing else to do. I went there for that. I had nothing else to do. It was ended because of the terrible weather, and nobody was prepared to go through, in terms of Paris, the police, the military secret service, and they came out very strongly and said, 'We can't allow you to make this trip.'"
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.