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Masks are politically popular. They are embraced as a public health necessity by experts and a broad cross-section of the American public. One of Mr. Trump’s own advisers, Chris Christie, said Thursday he had been “wrong” not to wear a mask at the White House. But Mr. Trump, despite having recently contracted the coronavirus and requiring hospitalization for it, still cannot bring himself to arrive at a full-throated embrace of mask-wearing.

“I’m OK with masks — I tell people, ‘Wear masks,’” he said. But he couldn’t resist an addendum. “Just the other day,” he said, he had seen a study that showed that people using masks were still contracting the virus.

He tried to twist the position of Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s foremost infectious disease expert, on masks. And he dismissed the scientific consensus.

“People with masks are catching it all the time,” he added.

It was exactly the kind of digression that has left Republicans frustrated: Six months, eight million cases and more than 215,000 deaths later, the president is still trying to bend the reality of the pandemic to his politics rather than the other way around.

The pandemic has upended American life like no other event, and death rates per capita are higher than in other developed nations, yet Mr. Trump continued to claim that his administration’s response had been a success. “We’re a winner,” Mr. Trump declared, talking about “excess mortality.” He added, “What we’ve done has been amazing, and we have done an amazing job.”

Biden finally addressed court packing — sort of.

Mr. Biden did make one bit of news: After energetically avoiding the question recently, he signaled that he would announce before Election Day whether he supports expanding the number of seats on the Supreme Court. But he said he wanted to wait until after the Senate had acted on the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.