Here’s the thing about the coronavirus and the 2020 election

| 4:30 pm EST March 6, 2020
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The coronavirus is a worldwide tragedy. What’s particularly galling is that so many innocent people are dying from it in nations whose corrupt authoritarian governments haven’t done nearly enough to protect their citizens from this kind of crisis. That said, there is a political reality to what’s going on, specifically with regard to the 2020 election.

There’s been a lot of talk about how the coronavirus outbreak in the United States could end up impacting the election. But there’s another aspect to all of this. Donald Trump tried so hard to get Ukraine to make up fake scandals about Joe Biden, he got himself impeached over it. As the scandal played out, it became clear that Trump also tried to get China to make up fake Biden scandals as well. What was less clear was whether China was interested in playing along. After all, China hated Trump’s trade war, but China surely likes seeing the United States in Trump’s weak hands.

Now China is dealing with a nightmarish coronavirus situation, with more than eighty thousand people reportedly now infected. This raises questions about whether the government of China will even be in a position to care about meddling in the 2020 U.S. elections. There’s also a major outbreak in Iran, which has specifically hit senior members of Iran’s government. We think the government of Iran has been rooting for Trump to get the boot, so it can reinstate the Obama-era peace deal it had with the United States. But if Iran was planning on meddling in the U.S. election either way, that may now be out the window.

Every deadly tragedy comes with political fallout, which can’t be ignored. The reality is that we don’t know precisely how the coronavirus crisis around the world could end up impacting how the rest of of the world tries to have an impact on the 2020 U.S. elections. All we can do is keep an eye on it, as it adds yet another layer to an increasingly complex election cycle.