He isn't wrong this time, and the request is to some extent political theatrics, indeed. If everybody is vaccinated around him, everybody else is wearing a mask and everybody is distanced like +10Ft in a wide open space then him talking w/o a mask for a few minutes is fine.
The problem is that he and his party's long track record of advocating against nearly all these safety measures. My fave is Abbott's AG attacking Austin's mask mandate by referring to the Governor's executive orders of removing mask mandates validated by an ongoing public health emergency. Justifying not doing something against the emergency by the very emergency we're supposed to not do something about is a typical Republican level mindfuck...and a sign of an approaching election. It's also very typical that here they don't mind governmental aggression overriding local wisdom. At least I see some principle here: it's not the level of governance (city, county, state, federal), it's whether it is currently in Republican hand that matters. I prefer principles that stick even when inconvenient.