President Donald Trump will be sidelined from the campaign trail after he announced he tested positive for the coronavirus.
According to The Independent, Trump will miss out on visiting several battleground states in the coming days including Wisconsin, Arizona, and Florida.
Trump was scheduled to hold a campaign rally Friday night in Sanford, Florida. The outlet reports that the Trump campaign did not announce any changes to the president’s schedule, but the White House issued an update of his schedule and the planned travel was removed.
On Saturday, Trump was supposed to visit Wisconsin and then Arizona next week. Trump and first lady Melania Trump, who also tested positive for the virus, are quarantining in the White House residence.
The president’s inability to visit swing states could threaten his reelection chances, according to political experts. The election is 32 days away.
Recent polling indicates his challenger former Vice President Joe Biden is ahead in some key battleground states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Nevada, The Independent reports.
Political strategists and senior aides to the president told The New York Times that Trump may face a harsh judgment from voters.
“It’s hard to imagine this doesn’t end his hopes of reelection,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican consultant, pointing to Trump’s “flouting of obvious precautions.”
White House advisers told the newspaper that the president’s positive test would remind voters how dismissive the president has acted toward the virus.
He has put forward positive messages that the country “has turned the corner” on the pandemic. In a pre-recorded speech for the annual Al Smith dinner Thursday night, Trump said “the end of the pandemic is in sight.”
One adviser told The New York Times that Trump's handling of the virus equated to a political “disaster.”
Political communication professor at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Berkeley Dan Schnur told the Los Angeles Times that Trump faces a “massive political problem.”
“Even if you assume the best health outcome for the president and first lady, he’ll still be facing a massive political problem,” Schnur, a past adviser to many Republican leaders, told the newspaper, “because his own exposure undermines the primary argument he has been making about COVID-19 for the last several months.”
While Trump is stuck at the White House, Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris have plans to visit battleground states, according to The Washington Post.
Biden is scheduled to campaign in Michigan on Friday and Harris is slated to make an appearance in Nevada, the newspaper reports.
It is unclear what will happen for the second presidential debate, which is scheduled for Oct. 15. The typical recommendation for isolation after virus symptoms appear is a minimum of 10 days, according to CNN.
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