Would a coronavirus vaccine win Trump the election?

President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | iStock)

Will a COVID-19 vaccine be available this year? President Trump seems to think so — in fact, he told Geraldo Rivera in an interview Thursday it might be ready by Election Day. Though he said he is "rushing it," Trump hastened to insist he is "doing it not for the election," but because he wants "to save a lot of lives."

Be that as it may, the election timing — and possible political benefit — has clearly occurred to him, and he hardly conceals his abhorrence of defeat. But it's not clear that a vaccine would be an electoral guarantee.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.