- Sen. Kyrsten Sinema fought the White House's request to wear a mask with Biden, a book reveals.
- Sinema was the first lawmaker to resist wearing a mask while meeting with Biden.
- Two New York Times reporters reveal details about the Sinema-Biden relationship in an upcoming book.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema was the first member of Congress to pick a fight with the White House over their request to wear a mask in a meeting with President Joe Biden, according to a forthcoming book.
New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns pull back the curtain on the at-times tumultuous relationship between Sinema and the White House in their soon-to-be-released book "This Will Not Pass," details from which Axios reported on Wednesday.
The authors write in the book that in the spring of 2021, Sinema "became the first-ever lawmaker to argue with White House aides when they asked her to wear a face mask in the company of the president, repeatedly asking why that was necessary when she had been vaccinated."
Biden, who is in his late 70s, was vaccinated against COVID-19 early in 2021, but still faces greater health risks from contracting the disease due to his age.
The authors also reveal that Sinema also deliberately kept Biden at arms length publicly, telling the president not to come to Arizona, a battleground state he narrowly won in 2020, to tout the passage of the American Rescue Plan, a major COVID-19 relief package Congress approved in 2021.
Sinema has angered her fellow Democrats by opposing key components of Biden's agenda. Sinema, along with Sen. Joe Manchin, resisted an economic spending package at the scale Biden wanted, and sunk Senate Democrats' efforts to change the Senate filibuster rules in order to pass voting rights legislation.
White House aides privately lamented that Sinema was more like Sen. Mitt Romney than a Democrat, according to the book, with one person comparing Biden's struggle to understand Sinema to his trouble understanding why his grandchildren use TikTok.
A representative for Sinema did not immediately return Insider's request for comment on the book's reporting.
"This Too Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future" will be released from Simon & Schuster on May 3.