Trump's condition spurs new chapter as campaign enters final month

President Donald Trump, diagnosed with covid-19, might dispute the comparison — but it’s been 60 years since a presidential candidate was waylaid by health issues during a campaign.

The closest analogy is 1960, when then-Vice President Richard Nixon was facing off against John F. Kennedy, said William A. Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and veteran of six presidential campaigns.

“Nixon injured his knee at the end of August and was forced to spend two weeks in Walter Reed Hospital. Although he returned to the campaign trail afterwards, he had lost weight and skin tone, which many people believe affected the way he looked on television, especially during his first, and probably decisive, debate with Kennedy,” Galston said.

When Nixon lost the election, many cited his debate performance.

The physical toll SARS-CoV-2 will exact on Trump, who frequently boasts of his robust health, is unknown. But the immediate impact, a halt to frequent large rallies, will deprive his campaign of what he and his advisers consider his most significant advantage over former Vice President Joe Biden’s more cautious pandemic campaign.

Covid-19 is the most recent development in a campaign that has featured a former campaign manager’s hospitalization for mental health issues, a debate that spiraled into name calling, allegations that Trump mocked veterans as losers and suckers, recently paid little or no federal income tax, knowingly downplayed the risks of covid-19 and is reluctant to condemn white supremacists.

Adjustments recommended

Dennis Roddy, a Pittsburgh-based Republican political strategist, marveled at how the Trump campaign has rolled with the blows.

“So far in this election, we’ve had everything but a swarm of locusts and rivers turning to blood. If the presidential debates are a health checkup on your democracy, what we saw this week was the colonoscopy,” Roddy said. “Ordinarily, any one of the litany of undignified episodes in this election would have set the race on its ear. With a month remaining until the vote, (Trump) contracting covid-19 is just another detail.

“I don’t think his absence from the campaign trail will make a bit of difference.”

Roddy said he would advise Trump to sit still and let trusted local surrogates — “local people, people who don’t have to be introduced in Chester County, but might have to be introduced in Madison, Wis., people from Allegheny County, who wouldn’t necessarily be known in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., but are known and trusted here” — stand in for him.

“He needs to localize this in the final run,” Roddy said.

Trump needs to adjust his campaign style, agreed Jerry Shuster, who teaches political communication and presidential rhetoric at the University of Pittsburgh.

“If he doesn’t, I would say that’s the best reason in the world not to vote for him because he would be exhibiting the poorest judgment I could possibly imagine for any modern politician in such a scary time,” Shuster said.

Trump’s refusal to wear a mask in public, even at large rallies in Pittsburgh and Latrobe with little to no social distancing, Shuster said, will cause many people to question his thought process.

Humanizing component?

Trump might benefit from ratcheting back his campaign and concentrating on his recovery, given that he has consistently polled behind Biden in national polls, said Philip Harold, a political scientist and pollster at Robert Morris University.

“It’s a little unprecedented. My first impression is this happened in Britain with Boris Johnson — the Donald Trump of Britain. It raised sympathy for him and support for him in a way that was surprising to me,” Harold said of Johnson’s bout with covid-19 in late March.

He speculated that Trump’s struggles with the virus could humanize him and allow people to empathize with the sitting Republican president.

It’s unclear how it will affect thes campaign’s flagging fundraising operations. One of the first things Trump did after announcing that he and Melania had tested positive was to cancel a Friday fundraiser in Florida.

Late Friday afternoon, he headed to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for treatment.

Trump is the third world leader to become infected with the virus. Johnson, 65, was hospitalized in intensive care with the virus, and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, 56, was infected in July. Both recovered.

At 74, Trump is older than either man. Experts say his weight, which hovers at the edge of obesity, coupled with his age and high cholesterol, put him at greater risk for serious impacts from the virus that has killed more than 200,000 Americans and 1 million people worldwide.

Masks at forefront

The virus that appeared to be on the downturn after last spring’s lockdown has come back with a vengeance in a number of places, including nursing homes in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties as well as the Pennsylvania Legislature. The state House, where a number of members have routinely flouted masking recommendations, abruptly canceled a voting session Thursday after a lawmaker reported he had tested positive for the virus.

Some believe this could help, in some quarters, break down the resistance to masking.

As recently as Tuesday’s debate, Trump mocked Biden’s use of masks. Referring to Biden’s cautious approach to campaigning in person, Trump dubbed him “Hidin’ Biden.”

Mike Mikus, a Pittsburgh-based Democratic campaign strategist, said that while Trump had hoped to downplay complaints about his response to the virus, nature put it front and center.

“The last thing (Trump) wants the campaign to be about is the virus and how he’s mishandled it, and that is going to be topic one for the next two weeks,” Mikus said.

He said Biden’s initial response to the news of Trump’s diagnosis — a tweet wishing the president and first lady a speedy recovery — was appropriate.

“That is what he should do, but you’re still in the middle of a campaign. People I call soft Joe Biden supporters are out there, and now he can demonstrate leadership. But he needs to alter his message so it is no longer about him and Donald Trump. If I were Joe Biden, I would just focus on him and his plans for the United States,” Mikus said.

Support intact, GOP leaders say

Local Republican leaders were confident Trump’s diagnosis would have little impact on his supporters here.

Sam DeMarco, chair of the Allegheny County Republican Committee, conceded there may be some disappointment among Trump loyalists that the president is canceling rallies and planning to go digital over the next two weeks.

“But they will understand. Unemployment was 7.9% today, with 680,000 new jobs,” DeMarco said Friday.” And the vice president’s call talking about rushing out 100 million rapid tests to nursing homes and facilities shows that the policies that have been put in place will continue to help the American people. I don’t see anyone’s enthusiasm for (Trump) dying down.”

Bill Bretz, chair of the Westmoreland County Republican Committee, said the first thing he asked members to do is lift the president and Melania up in prayer and wish them a speedy recovery.

“I don’t think he’ll go hide in the basement for two weeks. Force of nature that he is, he will be out on social media and Zoom,” Bretz said. “And our boots-on-the-ground operation here will not waver one bit.”

‘High road’ advised for Biden

Still, Franklin & Marshall College pollster and political scientist G. Terry Madonna wonders what the suspension of rallies in the wake of Trump’s diagnosis will mean.

“What we have to see is if it moves any voters,” Madonna said. “We’re in uncharted territory here — 30 days before the election with a president contracting a potentially very serious illness.”

Another issue to watch, Madonna said, is whether Trump’s positive test makes Republican voters more likely to vote by mail. Polls thus far have shown they are far less likely to do so than Democrats, he said.

Andrew Lotz, a political scientist and assistant dean of undergraduate studies at the University of Pittsburgh, said he hopes the president’s condition spurs new messaging from the White House.

“The message we need to be sharing is that, if you get covid, it’s OK not to work or get into contact with others. The very message I’d hope the White House shares with the citizenry is that no one’s job is worth their health,” he said.

“The thing for the Biden campaign to express is that he’s saddened by the situation and by the fact that we haven’t developed the kind of trust with the president that we don’t question this,” Lotz said. “The Biden campaign is in a position where they can send important signals, if they take the high road.”

Biden on Friday announced that any negative ads against Trump would be temporarily suspended.

Staff writers Paul Guggenheimer and Paula Reed Ward contributed to this report.