⁍ During the closing stretch of the presidential race, Donald Trump had worked furiously to shift public attention away from the virus and his handling of the pandemic.

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⁍ The disclosure of Trump’s illness on Friday shredded those arguments.

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⁍ ‘The more of the spotlight is on coronavirus, the worse it is for the president,’ said Dennis Darnoi, a Republican strategist in the key battleground state of Michigan.

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– President Trump has tested positive for the virus that has been killing people in West Africa, bringing the coronavirus back to the forefront of the presidential campaign just a month before the election. “The more of the spotlight is on coronavirus, the worse it is for the president,” Republican strategist Dennis Darnoi tells Reuters. “Even worse for the president, however, may be that his downplaying from the outset of the danger posed by the virus has come back to haunt him in the most personal way, making Democrat Joe Biden’s prudence during the campaign look prescient.” Trump, who is in quarantine at the White House, has been criticized by both parties for his reluctance to wear a mask during campaign events and his overall handling of the outbreak. “One of the judgments voters are making is which candidate would have better managed the response to the coronavirus and who has the leadership to lead us out of this national emergency,” says Ben LaBolt, former top aide to President Obama. “He’ll be able to say, ‘I went through it. I survived.’ Should he make a swift recovery, the same defiant Trump likely will emerge claiming victory over COVID-19,’ says Joe Trippi, a veteran Democratic operative who managed Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign. Trump’s campaign had been encouraged by positive economic news coming out of key battleground states such as Arizona and Florida, as well as polls that show voters still tend to trust Trump over Biden on the economy, according to one campaign adviser who asked to remain anonymous.