Protesters in MAGA t-shirts and hats march maskless through Target shouting ‘take off your mask!’ 

Florida protesters sporting MAGA t-shirts and hats defied COVID safety rules and marched maskless through a Target store shouting ‘take off your mask!’ during a demonstration this week. 

Footage shared online shows a small group of anti-maskers marching through the aisles of the store on North Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale shouting ‘take it off’ at other customers and cheering when people apparently complied.  

The incident took place in hard-hit Florida where confirmed cases of the deadly virus have now topped 671,000 and the death toll is edging closer to 13,000.   

Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has not issued a statewide mask mandate for public places but several businesses – including Target – have nationwide rules requiring customers and staff to sport face coverings inside their buildings.

The video shows the anti-maskers – including some children – parading through the store, with some swinging masks in their hands and none wearing them on their faces. 

Some protesters were seen wearing Trump merchandise including ‘Make America Great Again’ t-shirts and hats while one wore a t-shirt featuring a photo of Barack Obama sporting a Trump hat. 

One man in a Trump top – a reference to Trump’s refusal to wear a mask for much of the pandemic before backtracking in July – held aloft a speaker blasting the tune ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ by Twisted Sister.

The group shouted ‘take it off’ and ‘take your mask off’ at customers shopping in the store. 

One protester Cristina Gomez, who hit headlines in June when she claimed people wearing masks were ‘obeying the devil’s laws’, posted the incident live on her social media account.

‘If an infant doesn’t wear a mask, then no one should wear a mask,’ she said in her livestream.

‘People looking at us like, ‘What’s going on?’ Isn’t it crazy how people now look at me like we crazy because we don’t have a mask on? I think y’all crazy for having a mask.’ 

Her footage also showed the man in the MAGA top standing on the trailer of a vehicle outside the store prior to the protest shouting about being ‘sick and tired of having to wear one of these things’. 

The man ranted that people who don’t want to wear masks should be protected from the virus because the people who do wear them are not spreading the virus. 

‘If somebody wants to wear a mask to go into a grocery store let them wear a masks but how is it that if their mask is working that I have to wear one too,’ he shouted, before dramatically hurling his mask to the floor.  

Gomez had promoted the so-called ‘anti mask flash mob’ on her Facebook page prior to the event. 

Back in June, the anti-masker also went viral on social media when she blasted a local mask mandate at a public meeting of Palm Beach County commissioners and made unsubstantiated claims masks were ‘killing people’.

‘You literally cannot mandate somebody to wear a mask knowing that that mask is killing people,’ she said. 

‘Every single one of you that are obeying the devil’s laws are going to be arrested and you, doctor, are going to be arrested for crimes against humanity.’ 

Target, which requires shoppers to wear masks or face coverings in its stores nationwide, told HuffPost they were ‘aware of the group of guests who came into the store last night and we asked them to leave after they removed their masks and became disruptive and rude to other shoppers.’ 

The protest came less than 24 hours before the CDC head testified under oath that a face mask offers better protection against COVID than a vaccine.

‘I am going to comment as the CDC director that face masks – these face masks – are the most important, powerful public health tool that we have,’ CDC Director Robert Redfield said in a Senate hearing Wednesday.

‘I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against Covid than when I take a Covid vaccine, because the immunogenicity may be 70%. And if I don’t get an immune response, the vaccine is not going to protect me. This face mask will.’  

Donald Trump has repeatedly yo-yoed on his stance on face masks. 

In April his administration recommended the American public wear face coverings – a backpedaling of previous claims masks were only for people who were sick.

However the president continued to refuse to wear one for several more months.  

In July he sported one for the first time during a visit to a military hospital and claimed he had ‘never been against masks’ and that they ‘have a time and a place’.

This Tuesday he changed tact once more saying ‘there are a lot of people that think that masks are not good’.

When pressed, Trump’s only example was that waiters could touch their masks and touch plates when serving customers. 

A total of 34 states and the District of Columbia have face mask mandates in public places where social distancing is not possible. 

A total of 196,752 Americans have been killed by coronavirus and more than 6.6 million have been infected.