WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump said Friday that he would choose not to wear a coronavirus mask because it would interfere with his ability to meet with foreign presidents, prime ministers and "dictators."

"Somehow sitting in the Oval Office, behind that beautiful Resolute Desk," Trump said, indicating he thought it would be uncomfortable wearing a mask as he met with "presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens – I don’t know, somehow I don’t see it for myself."

Trump made the remark Friday during a White House news conference in which he announced the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would revise recommendations to advise people to start wearing masks in public to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Trump stressed that the CDC is not calling for Americans to wear medical-grade masks. Medical protective gear must be preserved for health care officials on the front lines treating coronavirus patients, he said.

The president repeatedly said the guidelines are voluntary and said that he would not wear one.

Trump regularly uses the "dictator" line to convey that he meets with all sorts of foreign leaders, from long-standing allies to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

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"Leaders come in from other countries – prime ministers, presidents, kings, queens, dictators, in some cases – they just don’t know they’re dictators," Trump said during an official event in Florida in December.

“You know when I meet dictators and presidents and kings and queens and prime ministers, they all come into the beautiful Oval Office,” he said weeks earlier at a rally in Pennsylvania.

But most of Trump’s meetings with foreign leaders have been canceled because of the coronavirus. The White House postponed a meeting with the king of Spain that had been scheduled for mid-March. The administration also canceled the in-person G-7 meeting of the world’s largest industrialized economies that had been set for June.

Contributing: Nicholas Wu and David Jackson

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