President Trump Moved To Walter Reed Medical Center After Coronavirus Diagnosis

President Donald Trump was transported to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center Friday afternoon, hours after he and First Lady Melania Trump tested positive for the coronavirus and with less than 32 days remaining before the November 3 election day. For months, Trump denied the existence of the virus and as the fatalities mounted, he acknowledged its impact on Americans but continued to downplay medical experts’ advice to wear masks, social distance, get tested and participate in contact tracing.

“I put a mask on when I think I need it…,” Trump said during the first presidential debate earlier this week with Democratic candidate, Joe Biden. “I don’t wear a mask like him. Every time you see him he’s got a mask…he could be speaking 200 feet away from him, and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.”

As Congressional leaders absorbed the news of the diagnosis and its implications for the government, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she is praying for Trump and hoped Americans would take heed.

“Hopefully, this will be a message to the rest of the country…that you have to wear your mask, you have to be tested, we have to have the funding for testing, tracing, treatment,” she said.

At this point, more than 209,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus, and more than 7 million have tested positive. The White House released a statement Friday, saying the President has mild symptoms and was running a fever.

With one month left until Election Day, political pundits and scholars are evaluating the impact of the diagnosis on the outcome of the presidential race.

The Impact On The Election

Dr. Ray Winbush, Director for the Urban Research Institute at Morgan State University, predicted Trump’s positive coronavirus test result will factor in voters’ choices.

“America doesn’t like sick Presidents,” he said. “Eisenhower was a good example.”

In Eisenhower’s first term as president, he suffered a serious heart attack, and he later suffered a stroke. When he ran for a second term in the White House, his health seemed quite poor when compared to his Democratic opponent, John F. Kennedy, whose aides were concealing his medical problems which allowed the public to maintain its perception of Kennedy as vibrant and charismatic.

Veteran journalist and author, Lewis Diuguid, said, “Trump has been defiant of all of the precautions that his public health experts have outlined…he’s created crowds. He’s set himself up to be above everyone else and something the coronavirus wouldn’t dare infect.”

But, Diuguid, a former columnist for a major newspaper, described the diagnosis as a “destabilizing force,” citing Friday morning’s drop in the stock market following word of Trump’s infection.

Several months ago, Diuguid was diagnosed with the coronavirus but was asymptomatic.

“I wouldn’t wish this virus on anyone,” he said. “Trump is one of my least favorite persons because of what he’s done to the country and because of how he’s tried to reverse everything President Obama did in the White House.”

Medical experts along with Diuguid mention the age and weight of the president, which place him in one of the more vulnerable categories for serious complications from the virus. And, although the death toll continues to rise in the United States and globally, there are also stories of recovery like Diuguid’s, but as he stated, “You never know [how it will affect someone].”

Image Credits: Saul Loeb/Getty Images.