Why shouldn’t Moscow go all in for Trump once more? After all, Russian President Vladimir Putin has gotten much of what he wants from Trump: delegitimization of Western democracies, a pass on bounties on U.S. troops, frayed relations within NATO, withdrawal of U.S. troops from Germany, cover for Putin’s interference in our 2016 elections. Putin has no reason to believe he will pay any price for a reprise of his 2016 activities.

The Biden camp responded swiftly. “Donald Trump has publicly and repeatedly invited, emboldened, and even tried to coerce foreign interference in American elections,” said Biden senior adviser Tony Blinken in a statement. “He urged Russia to hack the emails of his opponent in 2016, sided with Vladimir Putin over his unprecedented violation of American sovereignty that year, publicly called on China to investigate Joe Biden while begging them to help him win-re-election, and attempted to blackmail his Ukrainian counterpart into propagating a widely-debunked conspiracy theory about the Vice President — getting impeached in the process." Blinken continued: "Joe Biden, on the other hand, has led the fight against foreign interference for years, and has refused to accept any foreign materials intended to help him in this election — something that Donald Trump and his campaign have repeatedly failed to do.”

China’s public rhetoric has been increasingly anti-Trump, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. But this is to be expected since Trump has been going all out to shift blame for covid-19 to Beijing. However, it is not all that clear Biden is their man. The Post reported last year, “Though the U.S.-China relationship has been rocky over the past 18 months, many in China’s halls of power hope that the American leader will win a second term next year. For although he may seem unpredictable, Chinese officials are betting that Trump’s transactional approach to politics might be preferable to a more principle-driven president, whether Democrat or Republican.” Given that Trump reportedly gave the thumbs up to China’s concentration camps for the Uighurs and, prior to the spread of the coronavirus, had nothing but praise for President Xi Jinping, this is understandable.