Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis drastically upends already chaotic presidential race

The former vice president Joe Biden headed back to the campaign trail on Friday, capitalising on Donald Trump’s positive coronavirus diagnosis and hospitalisation that – fittingly, with a single tweet – drastically transformed the presidential race.

Rather than a weekend of campaigning, Donald Trump will spend the next few days at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in a special presidential suite where military doctors will be treating and monitoring the president’s condition. After months of being skeptical about the virus and its severity, the leader of the free world was admitted to hospital on Friday in a stunning development just 33 days before voters will decide whether he gets a second term. His military physicians did not indicate how long the president might remain at Walter Reed.

After himself testing negative despite sharing a debate stage with the president three days prior, Mr Biden headed to swing state Michigan in search of its 16 electoral college votes. But the normally energetic and loquacious commander in chief went dark, canceling his only official event of the day and an evening campaign rally. Mr Biden sent his prayers to the Trumps and said his diagnosis is not a time for politics but a reminder of how serious the virus is, while also touting the importance of masks before delivering remarks on his economic plan.

There were whispers in Washington among insiders and journalists about the president’s health, speculation that only intensified as morning became the lunch hour and then an early fall afternoon sun dipped behind the executive mansion that hosted what aides described as a “mildly” ill president. All top White House aides would say is the president had been “energetic” in the morning, barking out “five or six tasks” he wanted chief of staff Mark Meadows and other aides to complete by close of business.

“He’s absolutely hard at work,” press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told Fox News. “We’re having to hold him back a bit.”

But in an afternoon memo, the White House physician’s office described the president as fatigued and mentioned its doctors would soon be advising the Trumps on “next steps”. 

Mr Trump set mobile phones ablaze on Thursday evening as he tweeted or retweeted many times as he flew back on Air Force One from a fundraiser at his Bedminster, New Jersey, resort. But after announcing his and first lady Melania Trump’s positive coronavirus tests in a 12.54am tweet, the president went dark.

The eerie silence immediately changed the campaign, with Mr Biden hopping aboard a rented Boeing 737 for a campaign stop in Grand Rapids, Michigan, but the president who dominates every news cycle and makes most national issues about himself was nowhere to be seen nor heard.

“I’m starting to get a weird feeling,” one Washington insider said. “For him to not tweet, the guy must be really, really sick.”

As Ms McEnany spoke on Mr Trump’s favourite cable news network, the Trump campaign announced all of his planned campaign events would either be turned into virtual ones or postponed.

The president was scheduled to hold a campaign rally on Friday evening in Sanford, Florida, where Trayvon Martin was shot and killed. That event was scrubbed before lunch.

The Sunshine State stop was key because of Florida’s haul of 29 electoral college votes and the state of the race there: Mr Biden leads there, but by just over 1 percentage point, according to RealClearPolitics’s average of surveys conducted there.

Now that he is likely to miss those rallies, Mr Trump would not spend time firing up his loyalists in states that have a combined 50 electoral votes as he tries piecing together states to reach the 270 needed to secure a second term.

The timing of the diagnosis, one month and a day before election day, left the White House fighting off speculation that the president might even drop out of the White House race.

Ms McEnany was asked about a New York Times article that raised the possibly that some might question, now that the 74-year-old president has coronavirus, about him removing himself from the presidential ballot. She slammed that report as inaccurate, saying it appears merely “the hope and the wish” of the newspapers’s journalists that the president drop out.

“He’s on the ballot,” she added.

One option could be to have vice president Mike Pence fill in for the president during some campaign events, though he lacks the celebrity power of the chief executive.

His doctor announced the VP does not need to quarantine, despite recently being close to Mr Trump and other now-positive White House aides. In fact, his office announced that Mr Pence early next week will fly to Salt Lake City, Utah, site of his one and only debate with Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

The Covid convalescent period typically is 14 days. Falling within that window is the next planned presidential debate, in Miami.

Speaking of debates: city officials in Cleveland said on Friday they have been notified of more than 10 Covid-19 cases “stemming from pre-debate planning and set up” before Tuesday night’s chaotic face-off between Mr Trump and Mr Biden. The officials said most of the cases hit out-of-state visitors and, so far, none of the debate-related cases include Cleveland residents. The Trump team did not wear masks when they toured the venue before the debate.

If the president completes a full quarantine, it would take him off the campaign trail as he is behind nationally by double digits in some polls, and down by over 5 points in a list of key battleground states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Nevada.

Mr Trump either leads or is within three percentage points in just enough key swing states to show election night could become election month: Arizona, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Texas, Georgia and Iowa.

Of those, he has visited Iowa just two times this year and Georgia three times.

The president has touched down on Air Force One four times each, respectively, in Nevada, Texas and Ohio. He has been to Arizona and Wisconsin five times each.

Only his recovery and the ability of his campaign and the US secret service to inspect and book rally venues will tell the story of what a possible return to the trail might look like.

Asked about the planned 15 October debate with Mr Biden, Ms McEnany did not mention a possible cancellation. “Haven’t gotten that far just yet,” she said. “We’re focused on the president.”