Yes, they are still counting the votes, but even Donald Trump knows in his heart he lost the 2020 US presidential election. Not because it was fraudulent but for one reason: COVID-19.

There are three reasons COVID-19 was fatal to the Trump presidency. He might have managed re-election despite one or two of them, but he couldn’t defeat all three.

The first factor that doomed Trump was his administration’s handling of the pandemic. The president downplayed the virus as US cases and deaths mounted. He promoted questionable science as America became a world leader in COVID-19 deaths.

Arguably the Trump administration has done no worse than the governments of many other countries. But Americans expected better. It didn’t help Trump’s case for re-election when he so clearly didn’t know what he was talking about.

The second reason for Trump’s loss was that he managed to contract the virus himself. Apparently his case was mild, but the bottom line was he didn’t take the necessary precautions to stay healthy.

While he boasted about his swift recovery, his bout with COVID-19 showed he was not invulnerable. It is tough to make America great again when you apparently don’t know how to keep yourself healthy.

Lastly, COVID-19 changed how America voted in 2020. If you were watching the results on election night, Donald Trump was in the lead when you went to bed.

It was only later, as mail-in ballots were counted, that the numbers began to shift. Turns out that it really was Democrats that were voting by mail. Not unexpected – most American voters register as Republican or Democrat, so you pretty much know how a mail-in ballot will be marked just by who requested it.

With no COVID-19 there would have been fewer mail-ballots. More undecided voters would have voted for Trump if his government had handled the pandemic better.

Joe Biden may have been uninspiring, but with no end to the situation in sight, why would would someone not particularly partisan vote for a person who had already mishandled the situation? That just left Trump with his core supporters, and they weren’t nearly enough.

In 1972 Americans believed Richard Nixon when he told them he had a secret plan to end the Vietnam war. He didn’t.

In 2020 they weren’t going to believe Donald Trump when it came to COVID-19. That is why he lost.