Will Trump ride the corona challenge?

U.S. President Donald Trump said on October 2 that he and his wife Melania had tested positive for Covid-19 and were going into quarantine, disrupting the race for the White House. Trump, 74, is at high risk for the deadly virus both because of his age and because he is considered overweight. His handling of the pandemic drew a lot of flak and has become one of the mainstays of the Biden campaign. More than 2 lakh have died from Covid-19 in the US. He has just completed his first campaign at Cleveland. The President can no longer boast about his pandemic management. It would, after all, be ironic to make that claim.

It's cruel that the President has been taken out of the campaign trail just when he was hitting the peak – but then, again, if he becomes sick, it could raise questions about whether he should remain on the ballot at all. Even if he does not become seriously ill, the positive test could prove devastating to his political fortunes given his months of diminishing the seriousness of the pandemic even as the virus was still ravaging the country and killing about 1,000 more Americans every day.

He has repeatedly predicted the virus "is going to disappear," asserted that it was under control and insisted that the country was "rounding the corner" to the end of the crisis. He has scorned scientists, saying they were mistaken on the severity of the situation. The President is trailing in the polls by five to six points in the recent survey, but this is not much anyway. Trump has refused for months to wear a mask in public on all but a few occasions and repeatedly questioned their effectiveness while mocking Biden for wearing one.

Trailing in the polls, the president in recent weeks increasingly held crowded campaign events in defiance of public health guidelines and sometimes state and local governments. When he accepted the nomination on the final day of the Republican National Convention, he invited more than 1,000 supporters to the South Lawn of the White House and has held multiple rallies around the country since, often with hundreds and even thousands of people jammed into tight spaces, many if not most without masks. It is now up to his immune system to fight back to restore his health. So far as his chances in the upcoming election are concerned, his critics are already writing his political obituary.

But if there is one thing you know about Trump, it is this – he fights till the end. He will remain positive regardless of his positive diagnosis. Trump is full of positivity and a fighter till the very end. How will he use this strike of fate now is to be seen. Biden's campaign too gets affected now as he cannot attack Trump on coronavirus stridently any longer as Trump plays the victim now. Trump may not transfer power to the Vice-President and recuperate instead, preferring to ask his voters to rush to vote for him ahead of others.

Trump has to capitalise on it now to take on Biden. Will he do it? Brazilian President Bolsonaro did it after coming down with Covid-19. He became immensely popular with his people. Trump may be hoping to do the same.