This article has been updated.
Trump’s illness means that he’ll be in isolation at the White House for the immediate term — and, therefore, not actively campaigning. The president has long seen his rallies as instrumental to his political success, one of the reasons he was eager that they resume earlier this year. Until his health is improved and the risk of infecting others reduced, he won’t be holding any event, much less a large rally.
As The Washington Post has reported, it’s not clear when Trump contracted the virus or when he might have been contagious to others. Over the course of this week, he traveled or met repeatedly with members of his family, campaign aides and elected officials. Out of an abundance of caution, his reelection campaign has canceled events including members of his family, who generally serve as prominent and active surrogates on his behalf. The duration of that ban isn’t clear, but it means a loss of a number of events with a little over a month to go until Election Day.
The ongoing pandemic is one of the primary reasons that Trump has consistently trailed former vice president Joe Biden in the polls. As a result, his campaign had repeatedly tried to redirect voters’ attention, training it instead on crime or the economy. The Trump diagnosis throws that out the window entirely. Over the short term — and probably as long as Trump is not on the campaign trail — the pandemic will be the most important campaign issue by far.
It gets worse for Trump’s campaign. After all, the focus of the race will be not only on the pandemic but specifically on Trump’s decision to repeatedly downplay the threat the virus poses as he has pushed for the country to return to normal. Trump’s broad effort to suggest that the pandemic was all but over meant that a number of states and tens of thousands of Americans treated it as if it was. Over the summer, that approach contributed to a big surge in new cases in the South. Trump’s own infection seems like a microcosm of his “ignore-it-and-it-will-go-away” national strategy.
Trump’s diagnosis occurred in parallel with a number of other newly confirmed infections, including that of Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). Lee was one of several people who tested positive for the virus after being at the White House on Saturday for the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to serve on the Supreme Court, raising questions about the event. (Photographs showed that most attendees were sitting in close quarters while unmasked; video shows lots of handshaking and hugs.)
Lee’s infection, though, elevates a broader question: Will the Barrett nomination move forward as planned? Lee sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will vote on whether to advance her nomination to the full Senate. That committee is chaired by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who has pledged to progress on the stated schedule — but that may no longer be entirely under his control. A delay on Barrett’s confirmation is itself a slight blow to Trump’s plans for how the end of the campaign would unfold.
This became more likely with the revelation on Friday evening that Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) had also tested positive for the virus. Like Lee, he was at the Barrett event and, like Lee, he sits on the Judiciary Committee. Should Lee and Tillis not be able to participate in the Barrett confirmation process, the Republicans lose their majority and, theoretically, the ability to move her nomination forward.
Somewhat buried under the massive coronavirus news, though, was another bit of bad news for Trump’s campaign. The economy added 661,000 jobs in September, fewer than were expected. More worrisome was that the number of people who lost their jobs permanently increased by 345,000. Trump and his campaign have liked celebrating the drop in the number of unemployed people since the pandemic began several months ago, but many of those job losses were only temporary. Over the past seven months, the number of people who have lost their jobs for good has increased each month.
There are now 2.5 million more people who have lost their jobs permanently than there were in February. The number of people who lost their jobs permanently was higher in September than at any point since May 2013. The seven-month increase in permanent job losses was the highest increase since May 2009, the height of the recession.
This is not good news for the economy — and, therefore, not good news for Trump’s reelection campaign.
Just because a campaign has a bad day, even a historically bad one, doesn’t mean that the campaign is doomed. It’s easy to see how Trump might benefit politically from his infection, for example.
He might engender some sympathy from voters, though that seems unlikely to happen to any significant extent, given how strong feelings are about his presidency. He might benefit more if he’s able to beat back the infection quickly and return at full strength within days, providing a first-person demonstration of his insistence that the virus isn’t that big of a deal for most people.
Then, of course, there’s the benefit that could stem from Trump simply not being the face of the campaign constantly. A reelection bid in which Trump’s voice is muted might be a more successful one, given how polarizing he is.
As Republican consultant Alex Castellanos told the New York Times’s Jonathan Martin, “peace and calm helps” Trump — and Trump is often the reason that peace and calm remain elusive. A campaign centered around Vice President Pence doing fairly boring events in swing states talking about the pre-coronavirus economy is probably a campaign that gets on sturdier footing.
Castellanos did recognize, though, that a sidelined Trump doesn’t mean a quiet one. If Trump is well enough to watch Fox News and move his thumbs, his in-person events might be supplanted by daily barrages of tweets, allowing Trump to inject himself in the conversation even if he can’t do so personally.
Given the extent to which voters (including Republicans) generally describe his social media activity as the least appealing part of his presidency, that’s not ideal. However much it might signal that he’s on the mend, a Trump whose campaign unfolds primarily on Twitter is probably not a Trump whose reelection chances improve.