Split screen of Karen Pence defending Mike Pence not wearing a mask at the Mayo Clinic.

Karen Pence Defends Her Husband by Claiming He Was Just too Ignorant to Wear a Mask at the Mayo Clinic

Yet also somehow too experienced?
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Earlier this week, Mike Pence drew criticism from basically everyone for his decision not to wear a face covering while visiting with medical professionals and even patients at the Mayo Clinic. Now his wife, Mother Karen Pence, has taken to Fox News to defend his choice. But even there, in the safest of spaces, she’s not convincing.

Karen claimed that Pence didn’t wear a mask because no one told him he had to.

“As our medical experts have told us, wearing a mask prevents you from spreading the disease, and knowing that he doesn’t have COVID-19, he didn’t wear one,” she said. “It was actually after he left Mayo Clinic that he found out they had a policy of asking everyone to wear a mask.”

“Someone who’s worked on this whole task force for over two months is not someone who would have done anything to offend anyone or hurt anyone or scare anyone,” she continued.

Except he did do something to offend, hurt, and scare people! And which is it? Is he experienced enough to know how to behave in these situations or too ignorant to know that the clinic’s policy is to wear a mask? Especially when literally every other person he seemed to come in contact with was wearing one.

Also, the Mayo Clinic says they did, in fact, inform Pence’s office about the policy. They tweeted and then quickly deleted that statement, but continued to issue that message to reporters.

Not that Pence has ever been one for following directions.

Going without a mask doesn’t make Pence look dignified, it makes him look selfish (and scared of upsetting Trump), and it’s very strange that that reaction seems to have caught him so off guard.

(image: screencap)

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Vivian Kane
Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.