Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms Accuses Trump Of Violating Local Masking Ordinance

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump was photographed without a mask in Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms accused the president of violating Atlanta law while in conversation with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. Bottoms released an executive order on July 8 requiring that all Atlantans wear a mask or similar face covering in the public sphere. The airport, which is owned and operated by the city of Atlanta, is public property and thus falls under Bottoms’ jurisdiction.

In response, White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere has claimed that Trump was following all CDC guidelines during his trip to Atlanta, as well as the medical advice of Physician to the President Sean Conley. No direct statement was made about Bottoms’ allegation.

Further complicating the mayor’s claim, Gov. Brian Kemp (R-Georgia) has prohibited all local governments from instituting masks laws that are more restrictive than the current statewide order, which is not mandatory. Rather, the ordinance states that Georgians are “strongly encouraged” to wear masks in public. Local politicians, including Savannah Mayor Van Johnson, have publicly voiced their frustration with the new order, even going so far as to state that the governor “does not give a damn about [Georgians].”

It does not appear that Bottoms is going to move forward in giving Trump a criminal citation, joking instead that she would like to give him “a citation that sends him back to Washington, D.C.”