A couple of days ago I wrote, Bill Evanina, a top US counterintelligence official issued a statement warning that China, Russia and Iran are attempting to interfere with the upcoming 2020 presidential election.\u00a0 \u201cSpecifically, Evanina called out Russia, China and Iran for seeking to interfere in the American democratic process, an effort that includes targeting \u2018the private communications of US political campaigns, candidates and other political targets.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There should be no surprise from anyone that Russia is included in this list.\u00a0 They clearly prefer Trump win the election and by all intelligence reports will continue to do what they did in 2016 to ensure that happens.\u00a0 Putin (and his oligarch friends) have been pretty much left to their own devices during this administration, in spite of Trump\u2019s claims that he has been tougher on Russia than any other president (demonstrably false).\u00a0 This has been punctuated by the recent reports of Russia paying bounties to Taliban fighters to kill US soldiers and the US response was \u2013 zero!\u00a0 If Trump is reelected, Putin will become even more emboldened.\u00a0 Why wouldn\u2019t he want Trump in the White House.\u00a0 (Any bets that after Trump leaves office \u2013 whenever that might be \u2013 that there will be a \u2018Trump Tower\u2019 in Moscow?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One might wonder why, in spite of the trade war and escalating tensions between the US and China, that China would prefer to have Trump in the White House.\u00a0 In a word \u2013 strategy.\u00a0 China has a long-term global strategy \u2013 the Trump administration has none.\u00a0 China has witnessed the increasing withdrawal of the US from the world stage and they view that as in their best long-term strategic interests.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the US withdraws from the world stage, China is continuing to flex its economic, political and military muscles around the world.\u00a0 China is well aware that the US has alienated many, if not most, of our allies and that too is in China\u2019s long-term strategic interest.\u00a0 China knows that if the US were able to build strong, international alliances and collectively confront China, it would be much more difficult to pursue their global ambitions.\u00a0\u00a0 With Trump trying to \u2018go it alone\u2019 and follow his Make America Great nationalist policy, China knows the US is in a much weaker position.\u00a0 It\u2019s no small wonder that China would like to see another four years of Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A surprising member of the list is Iran.\u00a0 The Trump administration has been very vocal in its belligerence towards Iran.\u00a0 Why would Iran want another four years of Trump.\u00a0\u00a0 If you recall, Trump, against the advice of all our allies, pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal.\u00a0 \u00a0Even though the remaining members of that deal are trying to salvage as much as they can, Iran has pretty much taken the attitude that they will re-institute their program of nuclear enrichment.\u00a0\u00a0 Another four years will pretty much give them a green light to continue down this path.\u00a0 Another example where Trump will accomplish exactly the opposite of what he says he wants.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other reason that Iran is not really afraid of Trump \u2013 so far, he is all talk and no action.\u00a0 Sure, he has imposed some economic sanctions, but Iran has lived through these before.\u00a0 However, in one of my previous blogs, I discussed how Iran has shot down a Global Hawk drone and the US did not retaliate at all.\u00a0 The military developed a plan and was within two hours of executing that plan when Trump pulled the plug.\u00a0 Typical Trump \u2013 lots of big words, not a lot of concrete action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, here we are, less than 100 days away from the election, Trump is trailing badly in the polls, the coronavirus is ravaging the country, the economy is struggling and many, many experts are calling for parts of the country to shut down once again \u2013 and we have three international players who are all accused by our own intelligence agencies of trying to interfere with the 2020 election, all likely in favor of Trump.\u00a0 What could go wrong?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump was already impeached over the misguided attempt to have the President of the Ukraine initiate an investigation into his political rival.\u00a0 And it has similarly been reported that Trump has asked President Xi of China to accelerate buying agriculture products from the US to help boost his reelection chances.\u00a0 This is a man who has demonstrated that he will accept \u2018help\u2019 from wherever to help him get reelected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And if this picture wasn\u2019t ugly enough, our very own president continues to sow distrust about the legitimacy of our own electoral process and continues to deploy Federal troops against American citizens.\u00a0 As I have said before, \u2018buckle up\u2019 \u2013 this is going to be a rocky ride.<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A couple of days ago I wrote, Bill Evanina, a top US counterintelligence official issued a statement warning that China, Russia and Iran are attempting to interfere with the upcoming 2020 presidential election.\u00a0 \u201cSpecifically, Evanina called out Russia, China and Iran for seeking to interfere in the American democratic process, an effort that includes targeting … Continue reading July 27, 2020<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7FBZO-h3","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bikingwithmike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bikingwithmike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bikingwithmike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bikingwithmike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bikingwithmike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1057"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bikingwithmike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1058,"href":"https:\/\/www.bikingwithmike.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1057\/revisions\/1058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bikingwithmike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bikingwithmike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bikingwithmike.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}