President Donald Trump's announcement that both he and first lady Melania Trump have contracted the coronavirus follows reports of Trump aide Hope Hicks’ positive diagnosis earlier this week.

Dan Schnur, professor at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine, and host of the podcast Politics in the Time of Coronavirus, tells Inside the Issues that the news creates a very difficult political situation for the Trump campaign.

“For months now, the president has been attempting to get the American people to focus on issues other than the coronavirus," said Schnur. "Law and order and public safety issues, economic reopening issues, any number of others and, no matter how swift his recovery may be, we hope that it is, this very squirrely focus, the nation’s attention on the pandemic and its potential impact. And any day in which that’s the topic we’re talking about, as opposed to something else, is a good day politically for Joe Biden.”

Schnur said the diagnosis is unlikely to have impacted voters in either direction, saying there’s only a small portion of the electorate that is undecided.

“But that said, Donald Trump is running behind in most national polls and in most polls in the key swing states as well,” he said. “If we had had this conversation in the Wednesday morning after the first presidential debate, what I would have suggested then is that as loud and as unusual as the debate was, it didn’t change any votes either. And if you’re running behind in the polls a month before the election, every day that doesn’t change the dynamic of the race is a lost opportunity.”

"So, the president’s going to be off the campaign trail for at least a few days — maybe longer,” he said. "Until he returns to the campaign trail, this race is frozen in place. And if you're running ahead in the polls, that's a good thing. If you're running behind, it's a bad thing."

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