New White House COVID-19 Outbreak Is Crippling Trump’s Last Week of Campaigning: Report

According to a report from Politico, Donald Trump is scrambling across the country and looking for something that will resonate with voters while the shadow of a resurgent coronavirus pandemic haunts his re-election prospects.

At a time when Democratic challenger Joe Biden can sit back and strategically reinforce his position in battleground states while making inroads in states the Trump campaign thought were in their column, the president is facing more questions about COVID-19 after an outbreak at the White House that has afflicted Vice President Mike Pence’s staff.

That, in turn, has overwhelmed any goodwill the president had hoped to gain with wavering voters by his rush to place conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court.

According to Politico, “Trump’s frenetic campaigning is occurring as the fates continue to defy his reelection campaign. Weeks after the president’s own hospitalization for Covid-19, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, tested positive on Saturday for the coronavirus amid spiking cases nationwide, even as Trump continued to downplay the pandemic. And what would normally be a signature achievement for an incumbent president, the imminent confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the United States Supreme Court was largely lost in the noise.”

Pointing out that the “heightened focus on the coronavirus comes at the worst possible time for Trump,” the report goes on to note that Trump’s resurgent problems have allowed Biden to hammer the president on the two topics at the front of voters’ minds: the pandemic and the reeling U.S. economy.

With that in mind, the president is crisscrossing the country with Politico reporting that Trump is “at risk on so many varied fronts, there is no single, obvious place for him to go to stanch the bleeding. Instead, he is seeking to prop up his base in as many states as possible, while Republicans hope unfavorable polls and turnout models are off, just as in 2016.”

You can read more here.