Seventy two hours after being diagnosed with COVID-19, US President Donald Trump returned to the White House from his three-day stay at the Walter Reed military hospital in Washington. In a dramatic video, he got off a Marine one helicopter and walked up to the White House waving, and then he pulled off his mask and put it in his pocket to strike a thumbs-up pose for the photographers.
Why do these little details matter? Even as Trump has been consistently criticised for his cavalier attitude towards the COVID crisis, taking off the mask was nothing short of a symbolic act of defiance keeping with how he's has been downplaying the pandemic in his campaigns so far.
Since the very beginning of the outbreak he had been trivialising the use of a mask, going as far as avoiding it altogether for press briefings or rallies and even telling his supporters that they're free to wear it but it's his choice to not.