In another setback for freedom, Hong Kong has disqualified a dozen pro-democracy candidates from elections that were supposed to take place in September and then delayed those legislative council elections for a year over coronavirus fears.
In the lead up to the announcement, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged China to allow the elections to take place without delay.
“They must proceed on time,” Pompeo said in a Thursday radio interview. “They must be held. The people of Hong Kong deserve to have their voice represented by the elected officials that they choose in those elections. There – Hong Kong law that they proceed. If they destroy that, if they take that down, it will be another marker that will simply prove that the Chinese Communist Party has now made Hong Kong just another communist-run city.”
Unfortunately, thanks to President Trump’s reckless tweet Thursday floating the idea of the United States delaying its election over concerns about mail-in voting, the U.S. has much less moral authority to criticize China for the delay.
In fact, given how Beijing approaches public relations and diplomacy, it’s difficult to avoid wondering whether they purposely made the announcement now to take advantage of the cover provided by Trump’s tweet.
Thankfully, unlike Hong Kong, delaying the U.S. election would require an act of Congress, so Trump has no say in the matter. The tweet may have been meant as a joke to wind up the media and his opponents rather than a genuine proposal. But even under this interpretation, it is yet another example of how Trump’s irresponsible use of Twitter can have real world consequences.
