The mayor of Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser, appeared without a mask in photos from her birthday party on Friday, just hours before the city’s mask mandate went into effect.
In detail: Mayor Bowser announced a citywide mask mandate on Thursday, to go into effect on Saturday at 5 a.m.
She then took to Twitter on Friday to direct people to testing and vaccination locations, while stating, “Let’s stay in this together, DC. By masking up, we can protect our community and keep DC open.”
However, at a birthday celebration on Friday with Dave Chappelle, a native of Washington, D.C., she was pictured with several individuals, none of whom wore masks.
In a press release on the same day, she encouraged, “Washingtonians have waited months to be able to enjoy shows like this one again, and it makes it even sweeter to be able to reopen one of our favorite venues with a performance from one of the world’s most beloved comedians and a DC native, Dave Chappelle.”
Worth noting: In November 2020, Bowser faced similar criticism for her decision to attend President Joe Biden’s victory speech in Delaware, despite a quarantine order. She defended the trip by stating that it qualified as “essential travel,” which was exempt from the order.
“I do a lot of things to advance the interests of the District of Columbia. Some of them are formal and some of them are informal, but all of them are necessary,” she said at the time.
Scroll down to leave a comment and share your thoughts.
