BREAKING NEWS – Los Angeles, California – The Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti was widely mocked on social media for what some users saw as a stunning response to a question stemming from a photograph that showed him posing maskless with NBA legend Magic Johnson and San Francisco Mayor London Breed.

The three were inside a luxury box at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood Sunday to watch the NFC Championship game.

“I’ll take personal responsibility,” he said, before telling reporters that “if it makes you and everyone else happy — or even the photographs with people where literally I’m holding my breath for two seconds.”

In what is seen as an attempt regain an audience after CNN fell to the bottom of the ratings, Brian Stelter took a different approach to the photograph, alleging that Garcetti held his breath, not to avoid contracting Covid-19, but because he simply did not want to smell black people.