"I'm going to Walter Reed to see some of our great soldiers who have been injured," said Trump on Thursday. "Badly injured. And also see some of our Covid workers, people who have such a great job. And I expect to be wearing a mask when I go into Walter Reed. You're in a hospital so I think it's a very appropriate thing."

"Trump -- who has stubbornly refused to wear a mask in public, ridiculed those who have and done little to encourage his supporters to embrace the common sense public health measure -- has said he will wear a mask during a visit to Walter Reed National Medical Center on Saturday.

"He is also expected to be photographed wearing it, a photo opportunity that some of the President's aides practically begged him to agree to and hope will encourage skeptical Trump supporters to do the same."

It might be too late -- from both a public health perspective and a political one.

"Sometimes, American politics is complicated. Right now, it's extremely simple: the public has reached a harshly negative judgment of the president's handling of the most important issue facing the country, and the issue is so paramount that there's little room to wiggle out of it."

What's remarkable about where Trump finds himself now is that it's almost entirely due to his own personal vanity.

"Cloth face coverings are recommended as a simple barrier to help prevent respiratory droplets from traveling into the air and onto other people when the person wearing the cloth face covering coughs, sneezes, talks, or raises their voice. This is called source control. This recommendation is based on what we know about the role respiratory droplets play in the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19, paired with emerging evidence from clinical and laboratory studies that shows cloth face coverings reduce the spray of droplets when worn over the nose and mouth. COVID-19 spreads mainly among people who are in close contact with one another (within about 6 feet), so the use of cloth face coverings is particularly important in settings where people are close to each other or where social distancing is difficult to maintain."

Given that, why hasn't Trump been wearing a mask? Because he thinks it makes him look weak and/or bad. Not kidding.

What, exactly, do you make of that Trump quote other than that he isn't going to wear a mask because of vanity?

"Wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens -- I just don't see it," he said. Why not? Because, based on the science, what an American president would be saying by wearing a mask when meeting with foreign leaders is that he is following best practices to keep himself -- and those around him -- safe.

But of course, that's now how Trump sees mask-wearing. He sees it as a sign of weakness or lack of masculinity.

"He makes a speech and he walks onto the stage wearing this massive mask ... and then he takes it off, he likes to have it hang off usually the left ear. I think it makes him feel good, frankly. He's got the largest mask I think I've ever seen. It covers up a big proportion of his face. And I think he feels he looks good that way."

So, yeah. Because he thinks that masks make him (and people generally) look bad or not manly or tough or something, Trump has resisted wearing one in public for months on end. Which has had a deeply deleterious effect on public health and his own political prospects.

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How Donald Trump's vanity may have doomed his reelection bid - CNN