Trump bizarrely says Democrats were ‘choking’ on their masks at Biden’s Joint Session address

Nancy Pelosi’s mask was ‘biggest mask’, says former president

Donald Trump has bizarrely claimed that Democrats were “choking” on their masks during Joe Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress.

The former president was interviewed on Fox Business on Thursday morning when he offered up criticism of the address for its policy agenda and Covid protocols.

Mr Biden, with a limited audience of 200 members of Congress and officials, was flanked by Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who were both wearing masks.

Mr Trump said of the pair: “It looked like they were choking last night, while he was speaking, I watched and I said ‘oh, they might [need to] get some air’, it looked like they were literally choking.”

“Nancy’s mask was the biggest mask,” he added. “They love those masks and everybody in that room had vaccine, was in good shape, they could have done it much differently”.

Social distancing and face coverings were also in force, to limit the Covid risks for the joint session – which is typically full with both houses of Congress and other guests when a president is speaking in the chamber.

On Tuesday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) relaxed a number of recommendations for mask wearing when in small groups and outside.

For being indoors, the CDC continued to recommend that masks are worn even by the fully vaccinated, because the risk of Covid remains.

The advice drew criticism from conservative commentators, including Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, and Mr Trump on Thursday.

The former president added to Fox Business that he was the “father of the vaccine” and said: “We have the best [vaccines] in the world, everybody is trying to get them, and that was all Trump”.

The US has so far fully vaccinated over 98 million people, with more than 142 million having revived one dose.