The President of the United States, Donald Trump, was hospitalized at the end of the day on Friday as a preventive measure to help him in his fight against COVID-19.
The announcement of the positive coronavirus diagnosis of Donald Trump, which has minimized the extent of the pandemic from the start, and of his wife, Melania, had the effect of a bomb Friday morning all over the planet.
The race for the presidency of the country, which was already special because of the pandemic, had just taken a turn that leaves its share of unforeseeable situations.
What will happen to the election campaign and the two other debates scheduled by November 3? What impact will this diagnosis have on the race? Hard to say.
Trump may have caught COVID-19 from Hope Hicks, one of his advisers who was helping him prepare for last Tuesday’s debate.
For his part, Democrat Joe Biden, who crossed swords with Trump during the debate, received a negative result for the virus.
One month before the election, the president left the White House without a word, wearing a mask, to reach Walter Reed’s hospital in the suburbs of Washington by helicopter.
“I think I’m doing great, but we’re going to make sure things go right,” he said in a video message posted on Twitter.
AFP Photo
On Wednesday, the president tossed hats to his supporters in Minnesota.
A few days
According to his spokesperson, Kayleigh McEnany, this hospitalization should last “a few days”. On Friday afternoon, the campaign team said that “all previously announced campaign events involving the president’s participation are currently being turned into virtual events or being pushed back.”
It is not known whether the next debate between Trump and Biden, scheduled for October 15, will be sustained.
Frozen countryside
“The campaign is like frozen for the next two weeks and Trump needed this time to try to get back in the polls,” said Rafael Jacob, associate researcher at the Raoul-Dandurand chair.
However, the impact on the vote will be insignificant according to him.
“Since January, there has been theimpeachment [procédure pour la destitution de Trump], the health crisis, one of the worst economic crises, as well as the worst racial crisis in 50 years, and public opinion has remained virtually unchanged, ”illustrates Mr. Jacob.
74 years old and suffering from overweight, Donald Trump has two significant risk factors that could complicate his fight.
Doctors injected him with a dose of the experimental cocktail of synthetic antibodies developed by the company Regeneron, which gave encouraging results, although very preliminary.
If he got too sick or died, his vice president, Mike Pence, would take over, as the Constitution provides. Even then, the election would not be postponed, says Jacob.
“Unless he dies on election day, the Republican Party would announce a new candidate. Everything suggests that it would be Pence and that he would find a running mate, ”he says.
– With AFP