In a video ad posted to his Twitter, the Republican nominee for Senate and current Missouri Attorney General, Eric Schmitt has Peggy Ward, a parent, make a notable claim about his fight against masks that is false and misleading.
Claim: Schmitt will support students by ending forced mask mandates.
Fact: Mask mandates came to an end in St. Louis County on March 6th, 2022. While Schmitt was behind over 40 lawsuits against schools over mask mandates, these lawsuits were not the reason the mandates ended. KSDK’s article on this quoted Christine McDonald, who stated that “All of the school district's decisions to drop or change their mask policy have been based on data that we’ve had around in our communities, consultation with doctors, and a decision made by their board."
Although Schmidtt did fight against masks, the advertisement hones in on forced mandates in schools, even displaying kids ripping up masks (17-19 seconds) which misleads the audience, making it almost believable that masks are still required in schools.
Schmitt fails to mention the woman in the ad, Peggy Ward is a co-founder of the St. Louis County Parent Association, an interest group that has a clear and vested interest in fighting mask mandates in public schools. While leaving this piece of information out is not explicitly lying, it is misleading as Peggy is not an average concerned parent, but a professional conservative political activist.
Additionally, while doing further research on Peggy’s digital footprint, it was discovered that her kids go to a private catholic school in St. Louis County. Private schools were completely unaffected by county mask mandates and lawsuits from Schmitt. Her children’s school actually made masks optional on February 4th, 2022. More than a month prior to St. Louis County’s official end to the mandate.
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