Jill Biden goes maskless at White House reading event for masked school children

The White House's holiday celebration festivities this week included an event where First Lady Jill Biden read to school kids. But she was maskless while the children present were forced to wear masks and sit distanced from one another.

The unmasked appearance was against her own husband's advice on Monday morning, promising "no new lockdowns" amid the Omicron variant if everyone wears a mask and gets vaccinated against the coronavirus. (It’s also not the first time President Joe Biden has been seen out and about maskless.)

Earlier this year, CNN stressed the importance of wearing a mask when the outlet published a piece about an "unvaccinated, unmasked" elementary school teacher infecting more than half of her classroom in California last May.

An archive of the White House Christmas presentation is viewable over on C-SPAN. It includes a cast of PBS kids characters dancing in their costumes in what appears to be the White House's lounge area. Then the second-grade class of students from Malcolm Elementary School in Waldorf, Maryland, were guided in.

The White House chaperone appointed to herd the children directed the masked youngsters to find a socially distanced star on the carpet to sit at.

Then the kids sat for 20 minutes waiting for Jill Biden with only the cast of PBS mascots to entertain them. The Kratt Brothers of "Zoboomafoo" fame wore their masks initially when warming up the First Lady.

But unlike the Kratt Brothers, Jill Biden was unmasked when reading. Her husband confused viewers Tuesday with his arbitrary display of wearing a mask and taking it off again in a selective mask-wearing maneuver that's been criticized.

Jill Biden's choice in reading material was a book she wrote herself. It's titled Don't Forget, God Bless Our Troops and depicts Beau Biden's children awaiting the return of their dad while he served overseas. Military families were a theme of the discussion she had with the school children.

The maskless presentation by the First Lady wasn't the only part of the story making Tuesday's media rounds. Fact checkers at the Associated Press declared it FALSE that a child shouted profanity at Jill Biden as she began reading.

Jill Biden was also seen bringing in the White House's Christmas tree last week.