Trump campaign official suggests president getting COVID-19 gives him advantage over Biden

A campaign official for President Trump in a Monday interview said the president getting the coronavirus gave him a unique advantage over former Vice President Joe Biden given Trump’s “firsthand experience” with the disease.

“Firsthand experience is always going to change how someone relates to something that’s been happening,” Erin Perrine, the Trump campaign’s communications director, told Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom.”

“Of course that’s going to change the way that … he speaks of it, because it will be a firsthand experience,” Perrine added.

Perrine suggested his experience with COVID-19 gave the president an advantage over Biden, the Democratic nominee for president. 

“He has experience as commander-in-chief. He has experience as a businessman. He has experience now of fighting the coronavirus as an individual,” she said, adding, “Those firsthand experiences, Joe Biden, he doesn’t have those.”

“Those firsthand experiences are what are going to get President Trump four more years,” she added. “So, of course he talks about it differently now that he has lived through it.”

Perrine’s remarks provoked some mocking on Twitter, where several Democrats noted she was saying the protections Biden has taken to prevent himself from getting the coronavirus were somehow inferior to Trump getting the contagious disease after flouting public health recommendations to wear a mask and social distance.

Trump has held a number of rallies and political events with large groups of people who did not socially distance and who did not wear masks. 

Several people who attended his announcement at the White House on Sept. 26 that he was nominating Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court have now tested positive for COVID-19. 

Trump was hospitalized after his positive test, and received oxygen and a steroid in addition to experimental medicines.

The president announced Monday that he would be leaving the hospital and urged Americans not to be afraid of the virus.

The U.S. has confirmed more than 7.4 million COVID-19 cases and 209,938 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The coronavirus has become the defining issue in the presidential race. Poll show a majority of voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of the pandemic.