The campaign: Diagnosis creates uncertainty
An election year defined by a cascade of national crises descended further into chaos Friday, with President Donald Trump quarantined at a military hospital with the coronavirus after consistently playing down the threat.
Democratic challenger Joe Biden pressed a bipartisan message in battleground Michigan after he and his wife tested negative.
“This cannot be a partisan moment. It must be an American moment. We have to come together as a nation,” Biden declared at a speech in Grand Rapids, warning that the virus “is not going away automatically.”
While Biden vowed to continue his cautious approach to campaigning during the pandemic, the president’s diagnosis injected even greater uncertainty into an election plagued by crises that have exploded under Trump’s watch: the pandemic, devastating economic fallout and sweeping civil unrest. With millions of Americans voting, the country on Friday entered uncharted territory that threatened to rattle global markets and political debates around the world.
The development focuses the campaign right where Biden has put his emphasis for months — and where Republicans don’t want it: on Trump’s uneven response to a pandemic that has killed more than 205,000 people in the U. S.
And for the short term, it’s grounded Trump under quarantine at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, denying him the large public rallies that fuel his campaign just a month before the election.
Biden and other Democratic officeholders wished Trump well in the wake of his diagnosis, although some could not help but admonish the Republican president, who openly ignored his own administration’s social safety recommendations for much of the year.
“Going into crowds unmasked and all the rest was sort of a brazen invitation for this to happen,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on MSNBC.
The White House reported Friday evening that Trump will spend “a few days” at the military hospital; the president’s doctor reported that Trump was “fatigued” and had been injected with an experimental antibody drug combination still in clinical trials. His campaign announced that all of Trump’s scheduled campaign events were being moved online or temporarily postponed. Trump’s family, a steady presence on the campaign trail, was also grounded.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has tested positive for the virus as well.
Millions of Americans have begun voting in several key states, and tens of millions more will receive absentee mail- in ballots or begin in- person early voting in the coming weeks.
“Trump’s main advantages, including incumbency, have been removed. Rallies, his main vehicle for mobilizing his base, will no longer be possible. Fly- bys with Air Force One as a backdrop are gone,” said Republican strategist Rick Tyler, a frequent Trump critic.
He said Trump’s infection also “fundamentally undercuts his entire campaign strategy, which was to ignore the pandemic and make unsubstantiated claims that we’ve turned the corner and are making an economic comeback.”
Biden traveled from Delaware to Michigan on Friday afternoon for a campaign event, while Jill Biden was attending a separate event in New Hampshire. Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, made her previously scheduled trip to Las Vegas as well.
The campaign confirmed Biden, his wife and Harris all tested negative for the virus.
“This is not a matter of politics. It’s a bracing reminder to all of us,” Biden said in Grand Rapids, calling for a nationwide mask mandate as he spoke wearing a surgical mask. “We have to take this virus seriously.
Trump now faces tremendous pressure to adjust his rhetoric and campaign tactics after spending much of the year downplaying the severity of the virus and repeatedly declaring COVID19 would “disappear.”
As recently as Tuesday, Trump ridiculed Biden on national television for his cautious approach.