LA Mayor Garcetti Has Pathetic Excuse for Maskless Photo With Magic Johnson: He Was Holding His Breath

Sunday was a big day for big-name Californians to see and be seen.

The Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers were playing to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl — which, coincidentally, is to be played at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, the same stadium in which Sunday’s game was being played.

So it wasn’t unusual to see NBA legend Magic Johnson, who played his entire career with the Los Angeles Lakers, tweeting photos of himself with some megawatt superstars — including some from the political realm.

It was unusual, however, to see some of the state’s top mask scolds in the photo — without masks, of course. (Not that this Democrat hypocrisy is anything new — and we make sure America knows about it. You can help us bring readers the truth by subscribing.)

In the top left photo are the mayors of the two cities represented in the championship game — San Francisco’s London Breed on the left of Johnson, Los Angeles’ Eric Garcetti on the right.

Just to top it off — because no photo collage of prominent California Democrats acting like hypocrites would be complete without him — was a picture of a maskless Gov. Gavin Newsom in the top right.

According to Hollywood publication Deadline, a local public health officer has decreed that those at “mega events” need to wear masks unless they’re “actively eating or drinking.” No one seems to be doing that — and they’re posing with a man in a high-risk category, given that Johnson is 62 and is HIV positive.

Both Newsom and Breed, at various points during the past 18 months, have already given absurd excuses for being maskless in situations they shouldn’t have been. It was Garcetti’s turn to excuse himself cretinously.

He delivered, claiming he had been holding his breath at the time.

“I’ll take personal responsibility,” Garcetti said Wednesday when asked about the photo, according to Deadline, “and if it makes you and everyone else happy — or even the photographs with people where literally I’m holding my breath for two seconds — I won’t even do that.”

“I wore my mask the entire game, and when people ask for a photograph, I hold my breath and I put it here,” he told reporters, holding his mask in his right hand, “and people can see that. There’s a zero percent chance of infection from that.”

To compound the irony, the mayor made the statement during a news conference to go over safety protocols for next week’s Super Bowl. That includes the mask mandate at “mega events,” which Garcetti again defended based on what he called a high rate of COVID-19 transmission in Los Angeles County.

What’s more, it turns out Garcetti — who is tapped to be President Joe Biden’s ambassador to India, pending confirmation — was holding his breath a lot on Sunday:

There’s your mayor, La-La Land, holding his breath while celebrating Los Angeles’ 20-17 victory over San Francisco. Don’t you just see him turning a shade of Rams blue from the hypoxia? No? You should adjust your monitor.

It might not surprise you to learn Garcetti wasn’t the only person involved in this photo shoot with an absurd explanation.

Asked about the pictures on Monday, Newsom said he’d only taken his mask off for the picture.

“You’re correct,” he said. “I was very judicious yesterday. Very judicious. You’ll see the photo that I did take, Magic was kind enough, generous enough, to ask me for a photograph and in my left hand’s the mask and I took the photo. The rest of the time I wore it as we all should, um — not when I had a glass of water — and I encourage everybody else to do so. And, uh, that’s it.”

Except the picture with Johnson shows Newsom’s left hand and there’s no mask in it. Deadline noted it could have been flipped, although this seems unlikely given the text on Newsom’s cap isn’t flipped and his wedding ring is on the hand that’s showing, indicating it’s the left hand.

Newsom was reminded of his infamous mask-free foray to the French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley in 2020 by another reporter, who asked him if he should have been more cautious considering his history.

“Yes, of course. I was trying to be gracious,” the Democrat said. “I made a mis- — I was trying to be gracious. I took the mask off for a brief second but, no, I encourage people to continue to wear them.”

However, another video montage appears to show Newsom without a mask as he was greeting Johnson:

Breed, meanwhile, seemed to be shutting up about the picture.

CNN reported Monday it had “reached out to Breed’s office for comment,” although none seemed to be forthcoming. A wise PR move, given how fumblingly Breed tried to get herself out of trouble after she got spotted dancing maskless at a jazz club last September in spite of a mask mandate in San Francisco.

In that case, Breed told reporters she “was feeling the spirit and I wasn’t thinking about a mask,” adding patrons of the club “don’t need the fun police to come in and micromanage and tell us what we should or shouldn’t be doing.”

Breed, being mayor, is the de facto head of the “fun police” in San Francisco. All animals are equal, etc.

This was Los Angeles, however — yet it still looks like the guy in charge there isn’t fond of the mask diktats he supports.

Don’t worry, though: He’s got lungs like you wouldn’t believe. If you take a picture with him, rest assured he’ll be holding his breath.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.