"[T]his attempt at a joke did NOT go over well...," Robert J. O'Neill later tweeted.
I do wear a mask," he added. "I had my mask in my lap. Everyone has gone crazy."
O'Neill apparently was violating Delta rules aimed at preventing the spread of COVID-19 on its flights when he tweeted the photo with the caption "I'm not a p---y."
The tweet went viral before O'Neill said his wife removed it.
Delta declined comment.
But the New York Times went after O'Neill, as did Alyssa Milano, who drew headlines last week after announcing that a long battle with COVID left her losing her hair.
“You do realize you may be a-symptomatic and give the virus to other people that could potentially kill them,” she replied to O'Neill's tweet. “I think that makes you a sociopath. Besides, p-----s are actually so strong that we can deliver human beings out of them. Please, I’m begging you, wear a damn mask.”
O'Neill said it was no more than a failed attempt at a joke.
He also took jabs at the airline, including: "Thank God it wasn’t @Delta flying us in when we killed bin Laden... we weren’t wearing masks..."
That, too, got some people riled.
"I am not the bad guy," O'Neill maintained. "I [k]illed the bad guy."
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