Covid-19 is a "reality check hitting Donald Trump square in the face", says Washington Post senior editor Marc Fisher.
The co-author of 'Trump Revealed' told TVNZ1's Q+A the US President's recent Covid diagnosis "has rattled some of marginal supporters".
Undecided voters were polling "pretty consistently, it’s somewhere between six and 12 per cent of the population"," Fisher said.
"In addition to that you have people who are supporters of Donald Trump but are themselves marginal voters, they’re people who generally do not vote," Fisher said.
"What Donald Trump achieved four-years-ago was he brought out a number of those very marginal voters, generally voters with less education, lower income, white Americans who have given up on the system. He brought them back in."
Fisher said the question was whether Trump would be able to keep them voting, "at a point where they no longer trust what he says about the coronavirus because they see in their own community just how devastating this has been".
"The people being most affected by the virus right now are his supporters."
Fisher said Trump was using each day "an opportunity to put himself back into the centre spotlight and so he’s come up with a new virus-related story every day about his miraculous recovery and the campaign work he has ahead of him in the waiting days of this election campaign".
"He is very much trying to change the story line on the virus so that Americans buy his notion that the virus is really no big deal."
Watch the full interview in the video above.
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