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WASHINGTON (LifeSiteNews) — After President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden were caught on film walking through a D.C. restaurant without a mask despite a strict city mask mandate, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said “I don’t think we should lose the forest through the trees here in that our objective here is to get more people vaccinated.”

The incident is among the latest in an ongoing series of videos and photos showing government leaders violating their own mask policies while expecting compliance from the populace.

During a press conference Monday, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked Psaki about the video, which shows Biden and the first lady walking through expensive Italian restaurant Fiola Mare in Georgetown without wearing masks, while the president’s detail and restaurant staff were masked up.

“There is a mask requirement inside D.C. restaurants,” Doocy said, “yet President Biden and the first lady were not wearing masks while walking around a D.C. restaurant on Saturday. Why?”

“Well, I think what we are referring to is a photo of them walking out of a restaurant after they had eaten, masks in hand, where they had not had put them back on yet,” Psaki said.

“So I would say, of course, there are moments when we all don’t put masks back on as quickly as we should,” Psaki said.

“But I don’t think we should lose the forest through the trees here in that our objective here is to get more people vaccinated, make sure that that schools and companies around the country can put in place requirements to save more lives and keep people safer and not overly focus on moments in time that don’t reflect overarching policy,” she continued.

Fiola Mare’s mask mandate states that “[p]er CDC guidance and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s executive order, all individuals over age 2 are required to wear a mask indoors, regardless of vaccination status. Masks must be always worn while in our restaurants, except while eating and drinking.”

The policy aligns with the city-wide mask mandate which states that “[e]veryone (including fully vaccinated people) must wear masks in indoor public settings. This includes any business or establishment open to members of the public (including but not limited to: grocery stores, restaurants and bars (when not eating or drinking).”

Videos and photos circulating of the Bidens flouting both the restaurant’s and the city’s mask mandate come after many similar incidents in which government leaders have publicly violated their own mandates while requiring citizens to abide by restrictive mask and vaccine mandates and lockdowns.

Fox News noted that just hours after D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser re-instated an indoor mask mandate in July, she was photographed without a mask during an indoor wedding reception.

On Sunday, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was seen not wearing a mask in violation of her own executive order at Chicago’s Wintrust Arena.

Late last month, San Francisco Mayor London Breed was caught ignoring her own mask mandate at an arts district nightclub, where she left her table to dance and pose with musicians.

Asked about her decision to break her own mask mandate, which has led to a denial of services to private citizens who fail to mask up, Breed said, “We don’t need the fun police to come in and try and micromanage and tell us what we should or shouldn’t be doing.”

Last year, as California was crushed under crippling lockdowns imposed by Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom, the governor was spotted enjoying an expensive and maskless dinner with political advisors and colleagues at the now-infamous French Laundry restaurant.

Meanwhile Jen Psaki’s move to shift the conversation from President Biden’s violation of the D.C. mask mandate to urging Americans to take the experimental COVID-19 shot comes amid increasing data indicating the jabs are not as effective in preventing transmission, serious symptoms, or even death attributable to the coronavirus.

In August, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky admitted that the injections don’t stop transmission of the virus.

According to Reuters, the Pfizer-BioNTech shots have suffered a steep decline in efficacy over the span of 6 months, falling from 88% to 47%.

CBS reported the effectiveness of the Pfizer and Moderna jabs in nursing homes dropped to 53.1% over the summer.

Likewise, while Johnson and Johnson initially reported its single-shot injection had roughly 75% efficacy, “real world data” has indicated the efficacy is nearer 50-60%.