When asked why he had failed to set a national mask mandate during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic at ABC News' Town Hall on Tuesday evening, Donald Trump had a strange excuse.
"They said at the Democratic convention they're going to do a national mandate," Trump said. "They never did it, because they've checked out and they didn't do it. And a good question is, you ask why Joe Biden - they said we're going to do a national mandate on masks."
Biden's long history of urging local governments to issue mask mandates aside, Trump seemed to ignore that he was the only one between the two with the power to institute a national mask mandate.
When it was pointed out that Biden had in fact been in support of mask mandates for a while, Trump was unflinching.
"But he didn't do it. I mean, he never did it," the president said.
Joe Biden responded to Trump's remarks on Twitter, joking "To be clear, I am not currently president."
The deflection was part of a series of bizarre statements that Trump made at the event. He followed up by maintaining that "a lot of people think that masks are not good." When asked who those people were, he replied simply.
"I'll tell you who those people are: waiters."