Trump hospitalization throws campaign into question

For months, the presidential race has been stubbornly static but on Friday a huge question emerged: Where does it go from here?

With President Donald Trump hospitalized with COVID-19 for at least the next few days, it is unclear when or if he will get back to campaigning, how voters — largely impervious to any number of startling events — will react to his sudden illness, and what Democrat Joe Biden does in the meantime.

Not least, it is uncertain whether two more presidential debates will come off as planned.

“We haven’t gotten that far yet,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on Fox News.

Trump was “doing very well” on Saturday morning at Walter Reed National Medical Center, his White House doctor said.

“I feel like I could walk out of here today,” Trump told doctors, according to White House physician Dr. Sean Conley.

“The team and I are extremely happy with the progress the president has made,” Conley said.

The long-awaited briefing was the first detailed official update on Trump’s condition. First lady Melania Trump, who has also tested positive, is reportedly doing well and is recovering at home at the White House. Their teenage son, Barron Trump, has so far tested negative.

Trump announced his positive diagnosis early Friday. Trump was initially said to be doing fine and suffering from nothing more than mild symptoms. But the president’s condition deteriorated throughout the day on Friday, with symptoms including difficulty breathing and a fever. He was later airlifted to Walter Reed National Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

Trump was given an experimental cocktail of antibodies and remdesivir, a promising drug that may help reduce recovery times for COVID-19 patients.

A debate between Vice President Mike Pence and Biden’s running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, is expected to go on as scheduled Wednesday after both tested negative for the coronavirus. But as the 74-year-old Trump was helicoptered to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center just outside Washington, his campaign said “all previously announced campaign events involving” the president and his family “are in the process of being moved to virtual events or are being temporarily postponed.”

Biden, 77, who announced two negative tests for the disease, visited Michigan on Friday while Harris stumped in Nevada.

Appearing masked before a socially distanced audience of about 50 people at a union hall in Grand Rapids, Biden said he and his wife, Jill, were praying for the president and for first lady Melania Trump, who was also diagnosed with COVID-19. Their sickness, Biden said, is above politics.

But, he went on, their infection was “a bracing reminder to all of us that we have to take this virus seriously.”

Urging everyone to wear a mask — something Trump often shunned — Biden said it was the patriotic thing to do. “It’s not about being a tough guy,” Biden said. “It’s about doing your part.”

The Democrat appeared despite warnings from medical experts that his tests do not ensure he is free of the disease, which can take up to two weeks to incubate. At the urging of doctors, Biden canceled a second event scheduled for Friday night at his Delaware headquarters. His campaign also pulled down all of its negative advertising, leaving just positive TV spots to make the case for Biden’s election. In other ways, though, the campaign went on as before.

After the former vice president put out a call on Twitter for national unity -- “we have to come together as a nation” -- Trump’s campaign sent out a fundraising email excoriating “Phony Kamala” and “Sleepy Joe ... who is probably already asleep in his basement.”

The latter referred to the months Biden spent avoiding possible infection by limiting his travels. Some Biden allies and Trump’s foes said they had no intention of modulating their attacks on the president, despite his condition.

“The reasons for why he should not be reelected have not changed, other than the fact that he clearly didn’t take this seriously enough personally,” said Reed Galen, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a group of renegade Republicans who have broadcast some of the harshest anti-Trump advertising of the campaign.

“We obviously wish him and the first lady well,” said Galen, who served in the George W. Bush administration. “But we have a mission and that is to defeat him in November, and we’ll do everything we can do to make that happen.”

The fundamentals of the presidential race remain the same. Biden continues to hold a steady lead in national polls as well as the battleground states needed to win the White House. But the turnabout Friday was striking. Biden, who was mocked for sheltering at home against the deadly virus, was traveling the country. The president who scoffed at his prudence and minimized the risk off the pandemic -- encouraging others to do the same -- was laid low.

The absence of live campaign events for the foreseeable future is a particular blow to Trump, who not only gets emotional sustenance from his rowdy appearances but also uses them as an organizing, money-raising and mobilization tool for his campaign. Privately, while praising Biden for his caution and mindfulness in avoiding large rallies, some Democrats worried that Trump was benefiting from the dynamism of his events and the image of forging ahead despite the danger.

The president’s diagnosis instantly changed that, highlighting with neon-bright emphasis what has consistently been one of the greatest impediments to his reelection: a widely criticized response to the pandemic that has killed more than 207,000 people in the U.S. and more than 1 million worldwide.

The New York Daily News contributed to this report.