The 2024 presidential race has seen enough shocking events transpire in a few short months to fill an entire calendar year, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be a much-talked about October surprise looming in the final weeks of the campaign.
Each of the past two presidential cycles have been marked by an October surprise, including the “Access Hollywood” tape along with the Comey letter in 2016 and then questions around a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden in 2020.
Here are five potential October surprises that could emerge this year.
The emergence of new video or audio
Each of the last two presidential elections have been marked by the emergence of new audio or video footage through news reports.
In 2016, it was the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump was heard bragging about groping women, which nearly ended his White House bid that year. In 2020, it was the Hunter Biden laptop that featured controversial images of President Biden’s son.
For Harris, the risk of new audio or video coming to light centers around her past policy positions.
News outlets have been focused on some of the policies Harris backed during her 2020 presidential bid, when she said she supported a ban on fracking and backed decriminalizing illegally crossing the border. Additional audio or video of her as a presidential candidate, prosecutor or senator could cause new headaches for her campaign. She has distanced herself from those views during the 2024 campaign.
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Trump’s ability to shock the general electorate has waned over the near decade he’s spent in the political spotlight with each incendiary comment he makes at rallies and on social media.
Even in 2016, Trump managed to quickly recover from the “Access Hollywood” scandal in a matter of days.
But video and audio of closed-door remarks by Trump to donors, for example, could create a firestorm or provide fodder for the Harris campaign, such as when the former president promised wealthy donors tax cuts in a potential second term.
The significance of a damaging news report was on display last month when CNN reported on posts North Carolina GOP gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, whom Trump endorsed, made on an online pornography forum between 2008 and 2012, including that he supported slavery and called himself a “Black Nazi.”
A major weather event
The devastation of Hurricane Helene in recent days was a prime example of how a significant weather event could upend the campaign in the coming weeks.
Helene ravaged swaths of Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, taking out critical infrastructure and cutting off power for millions of people in those states. White House homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall told reporters Monday as many as 600 people were still unaccounted for.
The political impacts were immediate: Harris cut short a West Coast campaign swing to return to Washington, D.C., for a storm briefing. She is expected to tour storm damage in the coming days, while Trump visited Georgia to see the aftermath Monday.
There is also the possibility that the storm damage could hinder early voting, particularly in North Carolina and Georgia, where early in-person voting is set to begin in the coming weeks. Both of those states are closely contested and are expected to help determine the winner of November’s election.
Hurricane season lasts into November, leaving open the possibility of another major storm along the Gulf Coast. And White House officials in particular have warned that climate change has led to more damaging, more intense storms that could wreak havoc on the campaign.
More political violence
One of the gravest potential October surprises would be violence targeting candidates, election workers, staff or other officials.
Trump has been at the center of two attempted assassinations in recent months, ratcheting up fears of political divisions turning to violence. He was grazed by a bullet at a July rally, and an alleged gunman camped out along the perimeter of one of his golf club’s in September before a Secret Service agent fired at him.
A Virginia man was arrested in late July for allegedly making death threats against Harris.
NBC News reported in September that the FBI was investigating after election officials in at least six states received suspicious packages.
“I’m most concerned about vote-counting and election judges and violence. There’s been a pretty clear pattern of threats about who gets to count votes,” John Murphy, a professor at the University of Illinois who studies political rhetoric, said in a recent interview.
But calls to lower the political temperature after each of those assassination attempts have mostly been futile, with Trump in particular ramping up the personal attacks on his opponents.
On Monday, the former president blamed Democrats for Secret Service staffing issues that forced him to relocate a Saturday rally in Wisconsin.
Another Trump-Harris debate
Perhaps one of the likeliest events that could shake up the presidential race would be a second debate between Trump and Harris.
The two candidates squared off on stage Sept. 10, but Trump has thus far declined to agree to a second debate, claiming he won their first clash and later suggesting it was too late for another one because early voting had already started.
Harris has repeatedly pushed for another debate with Trump in October. She has accepted an invite for a CNN-hosted debate Oct. 23.
But some Trump allies have urged him to reconsider, and there is a lingering sense that the former president could still change his mind if he feels his poll numbers could use a boost or he needs to change the news cycle in the weeks before Election Day.
“As of right now this is the only debate that is left on the calendar. President Trump has made it pretty clear where he is,” senior Trump adviser Jason Miller said Monday, referring to this week’s vice presidential clash. “There were other opportunities that Kamala Harris could have joined President Trump for previous debates.”
Broader war breaks out
While domestic events are most likely to have the most impact on the election, the risk of war breaking out abroad could also have serious ramifications on the campaign.
There are significant concerns about tensions in the Middle East, where Israel’s war with Hamas is approaching its one-year mark.
Separately, Israel decimated Hezbollah’s leadership with strikes over the past week, while also killing hundreds of civilians and forcing nearly 1 million people from their homes in Lebanon.
Israel reportedly told the White House on Monday it could launch a limited ground operation in Lebanon in the coming days, escalating fears of an all-out war between Israeli forces and Hezbollah, designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization.
Such a war could further inflame tensions among Democrats in particular, as the party has been divided over the Biden administration’s support for Israel over the past year despite its forces killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza in its war against Hamas.
It would also create a potential opening for Trump to go on offense on foreign policy. While Harris has argued Trump can’t be trusted to maintain alliances and that he has cozied up to dictators, the former president has pointed to conflicts in Ukraine and in the Middle East to argue the world is less safe than it was when he was in office.
Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
From time to time when Jonah Goldberg appears on CNN, he and the other panelists are asked to make political predictions.
Sometimes that’s easy. For instance, one can safely predict that Donald Trump isn’t going to win his “absolute immunity” case before the Supreme Court, just as surely as he wasn’t going to lose the case brought against Colorado for barring him from the ballot there.
But it feels unfair to ask Jonah and the rest of the gang to go on guessing what will happen in a modern presidential campaign, when insanely destabilizing “October surprises” have become standard procedure. The only safe prediction in 2024 is that the race will be upended by something completely unpredictable.
It wasn’t always that way, dear reader. I am an old-ish man, yet the only meaningful October surprise of my lifetime until 2016 came when word leaked before Election Day 2000 that George W. Bush had once been arrested for driving under the influence. In the end, that might have tilted enough votes to Al Gore to spoil an otherwise clear-cut victory for the Republican, plunging the country into the nightmare of a contested election.
Imagine: Within living memory, before Americans got comfortable with coup plots and porn-star payoffs, something like a youthful DUI arrest was scandalous enough to endanger a candidate’s presidential chances. Things are different now.
Part of the reason there have been so few meaningful October surprises is that few presidential contests over the last 40 years remained close enough to be scrambled by one. From the start of the Reagan Revolution in 1980 to its demise in 2016, only the two races won by Bush 43 were tight on Election Day. Barack Obama and John McCainmight have ended up in a dogfight if not for the financial crisis that struck in the fall of 2008, but I doubt it. Disillusionment with Bush was so broad and excitement for the first black president was so high that I suspect Obama would have won comfortably regardless, if not quite as comfortably as he did.
With that as context, let me ask: Do you fully appreciate how bananas the last two presidential cycles have been with respect to October—or at least election-year—surprises?
In both races, not one, a computer that may or may not have contained evidence of the Democratic nominee’s criminality surfaced weeks before the vote, in bizarre circumstances.
In 2016, the FBI reopened its “Emailgate” probe of Hillary Clinton at the eleventh hour after it stumbled across communications from her on a device belonging to former Rep. Anthony Weiner, whom it was investigating for, er, sexting a 15-year-old. That surprise might have cost Clinton the election. Four years later, a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden turned up at a random Delaware computer repair shop containing emails implying corruption by Joe Biden. Intelligence experts rushed to reassure the press that the laptop was a Russian disinformation operation. Oops: It wasn’t. Biden held on to win by the skin of his teeth.
Those weren’t the only surprises in 2016 and 2020, though. In both races, not one, a hugely influential Supreme Court justice up and died in the thick of the campaign.
Neither was an “October” surprise, strictly speaking. Antonin Scalia passed away in February of 2016 while Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed in September of 2020, but their deaths very well might have decided the outcome of each year’s presidential race. For Republicans, filling the Scalia vacancy was a compelling reason to set aside their misgivings about Trump. For undecided voters fresh off of watching Amy Coney Barrett’s light-speed confirmation, thwarting a further conservative takeover of the court might have made the difference for Biden in swing states he won by razor-thin margins.
In the Trump era, when every presidential election is 50-50 and no one trusts anyone, October surprises seem not just likely but unavoidable. And so while it’s unfair to ask Jonah or anyone else to anticipate how freakishly strange 2024 might get, it’s an understandable question. There will be some unexpected jolt to the campaign, one assumes. We might as well start speculating about what it’ll be.
I have a prediction.
It’s tempting to assume that an October surprise will matter less this year than in previous cycles because of how well the public already knows both candidates and how strongly it feels about them. If you’re voting for Biden, the election is about democracy or abortion or climate change; if you’re voting for Trump, it’s about inflation or immigration or “retribution.” There isn’t much room politically for an October surprise to matter.
It’s tempting to believe that. But it’s wrong.
The opposite is closer to the truth. Because so many Americans doubt that either candidate is fit for office, a sudden jolt to the race near Election Day could tilt them decisively toward one or the other. Look no further than last week’s verdict in Manhattan for evidence that certain “disengaged voters” who currently favor Trump will reconsider if met with a big enough “surprise.” According to New York Times political analyst Nate Cohn, a small but meaningful share has already switched to Biden following Trump’s conviction:
A potentially crucial sliver of Mr. Trump’s former supporters—3 percent—now told us they’ll back Mr. Biden, while another 4 percent say they’re now undecided. … The shift was especially pronounced among the young, nonwhite and disengaged Democratic-leaning voters who have propelled Mr. Trump to a lead in the early polls. Of the people who previously told us they had voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 but would vote for Mr. Trump in 2024, around one-quarter now said they would instead stick with Mr. Biden.
Voters who dislike both candidates—who have been dubbed double haters—were especially likely to defect from Mr. Trump.
There’s also anecdotal evidence that “double haters” have been moved by the verdict. When political consultant Sarah Longwell interviewed a panel of nine two-time Trump voters who have since soured on him but are leery of supporting the president, she found post-verdict that five are now leaning toward voting for Biden.
An October surprise will matter, maybe more than it ever has. So what’ll it be?
The most tumultuous possibility is a health crisis for either candidate. Biden wouldn’t recover politically from one; doubts about his physical and mental fitness run too deep for a trip to the hospital to be successfully “messaged” away. Trump would fare better unless his crisis was plainly debilitating, partly because the public has more confidence in his baseline health and partly because his lunatic fans would insist that Biden had him poisoned or whatever. But it would hurt him, surely, by demonstrating that the health gap between him and Old Man Joe is smaller than we thought.
The political dynamics of another Supreme Court justice keeling over would favor Democrats, especially if the deceased were a Democratic appointee. It’d be 2016 in reverse. At the time, Republicans couldn’t bear the thought of the great Scalia’s death producing a 5-4 liberal advantage on the court. Eight years later, Democrats are facing a 6-3 conservative advantage that probably won’t be undone for a generation and might not be undone for two generations if it slips to 7-2.
Nothing would get disaffected progressives to set aside their qualms about voting for Biden like the near-term prospect of Supreme Court Justice Aileen Cannon would. Given what happened in 2016 and 2020, if I were Sonia Sotomayor or Elena Kagan I’d go get that check-up at the doctor’s office that I’ve been putting off.
Both of those are what we might call “actuarial” October surprises. But what about more foreseeable ones?
An obvious potential surprise is Trump being convicted in one of the three remaining criminal cases against him, but that’s a longshot that’s getting longer by the day.
The prosecution in Georgia, for example, is frozen indefinitely as an appellate court considers whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is too unethical to remain in charge. And the classified documents case is going nowhere as future Justice Cannon takes her sweet time moving forward, lately having paused to determine whether Special Counsel Jack Smith was lawfully appointed or not.
The pace of the third prosecution, related to trying to overturn the 2020 election, depends in part on how the Supreme Court rules on Trump’s “absolute immunity” claim. If it sends the matter back to the lower court to determine which of his acts at the time were “official” or not, that’ll slow things down enough to ensure that that one won’t make it to a jury before November either.
But if it does, and Trump is convicted? One would hope that would be the end of his presidential chances. Disengaged voters and “double haters” have already inched away from him after seeing him convicted on minor charges in New York; a jury verdict finding him criminally at fault for his coup plot four years ago might send undecided voters fleeing.
On the flip side, if a New York appellate court ends up overturning Trump’s conviction in Manhattan before November, that might be the end of Biden. Undecided voters might treat it as confirmation that Trump was right all along about Democrats waging illicit “lawfare” against him on trumped-up charges (no pun intended). The backlash would be fatal, especially after Team Joe spent so much time and energy hyping the fact that his opponent is a “convicted felon.”
Another “surprise” possibility: What if a well-timed “deepfake” of either candidate saying something outlandish and disqualifying emerges?
Don’t laugh. Biden has already been the victim of one during this campaign and his aides have used the prospect of it happening again as an excuse to suppress the audio of his interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur. Phony yet convincing audio and/or video of politicians caught in compromising situations will have “October surprise” potential in American elections forevermore. And in a race in which voters already doubt the fitness of both contenders and deeply distrust non-aligned media sources, it’s easy to imagine them lending undue weight to a “scandalous” recording that surfaces just before Election Day.
Imagine a tape of Biden struggling to remember his own name in a meeting with a foreign leader. Or envision the probably mythical audio of Donald Trump saying the N-word on the set of The Apprentice appearing after nine years of liberals trying and failing to verify that it exists. The country would divide instantly and bitterly over whether either recording was a high-tech dirty trick or shocking confirmation that the other side’s candidate is even less suited to being president than they assumed.
As a bonus, if the target of the deepfake ended up losing the election and then the nature of the fakery were exposed, his supporters would insist that the outcome had been effectively “rigged” and should be treated as illegitimate. It would be the “Hunter’s laptop” fiasco on steroids. Public faith in the integrity of American elections, already distressingly weak, would soften further.
It’s such an obvious and easy way to set Americans at each other’s throats that one wonders why Russia or China wouldn’t do it.
I think we’re likely to see a deepfake or two, or 10. But that’s not my prediction.
No, my prediction is this: At some point before November, intelligence sources will allege that Trump has been privately lobbying foreign leaders to undermine Biden’s policies.
“Biden’s policies” are America’s policies so long as he’s president. In better days, it would have been an unholy scandal for a presidential candidate to secretly undercut American policy abroad during a campaign for the selfish end of gaining an electoral advantage. But as we saw with the case of George W. Bush’s DUI, Things Are Different Now.
For instance, here’s something that I dare say wouldn’t have flown during the 2000 election.
Convicted Felon Trump says his good friend Putin will release WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich as soon as Trump wins the election, but he won’t do it if Biden wins. pic.twitter.com/EeUQLyzJyR
If you’re an American with enough juice abroad to get an American hostage released, you don’t refrain from using that influence until you get something that you want in return. Doing so has the air of a ransom demand, don’t you think?
In effect, Trump is lobbying Russia not to release Evan Gershkovich before November 5. He’s actually trying to extend the Wall Street Journal reporter’s captivity because he sees a benefit to himself in doing so. The possibility that Ronald Reagan’s campaign did something similar in 1980, conniving to delay the release of Americans held hostage by Iran until after the election, was so politically explosive that the matter is still being litigated more than 40 years later. Now here’s Trump conniving in plain sight.
With any other politician, it would feel unfair to speculate without evidence about them exploiting the foreign relationships they’ve built to undercut U.S. foreign policy. But in this case, character is destiny. Trump has done this before, after all: When he leaned on Volodymyr Zelensky in 2019 for information on Joe Biden in exchange for duly appropriated American weapons, he was subordinating the country’s interests to his personal interests. Electoral considerations inevitably influence a president’s policy choices, but only one president has been so brazen as to use official policy to try to extort an ally for oppo research on his opponent.
He has no qualms in principle either about accepting foreign help to win an election. In 2016, Trump half-joked at a press conference that Russia should “find” Hillary Clinton’s missing emails and publish them. The same year, his campaign eagerly promoted material lifted by Russian hackers from computers owned by Democrats like John Podesta and laundered through Wikileaks. Although it came to nothing in the end, his son and other staffers sought Russian assistance in the election at a meeting at Trump Tower.
Trump is amoral, transactional, and desperate to regain the presidency in order to thwart the remaining criminal prosecutions he’s facing. Because there’s no civic priority that he holds more dearly than his own aggrandizement, there’s nothing to dissuade him from reaching out to Russia or China or whoever with offers of favors when he returns to office in exchange for them making trouble for Biden now. Remember, even with respect to an issue like immigration about which he really does care, he was willing to sabotage congressional efforts to ease the crisis at the border because he feared losing his electoral advantage on the issue.
The idea that an American citizen shouldn’t undermine his country’s foreign policy wouldn’t even cross his mind.
In early April, the New York Times reported that Trump had recently spoken by phone to Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, although the topic of conversation is unknown. Maybe they were just catching up. Or maybe Trump reminded him that rising oil prices are bad for an incumbent president in an election year. Or, maybe, they chatted about something else: “News of their discussion comes at a time when the Biden administration is engaged in delicate negotiations with the Saudis aimed at establishing a lasting peace in the Middle East,” the paper noted.
If Trump doesn’t want the border tightened until he’s president or Evan Gershkovich freed until he’s president, it would stand to reason that he wouldn’t want an Israel-Saudi peace accord signed until he’s president either. How would America react if it discovered in October that he had talked the Saudis out of making peace because he feared that doing so would help Biden?
A few weeks ago, NBC News published a report describing apprehension among U.S. officials that North Korea is preparing to “potentially take its most provocative military actions in a decade close to the U.S. presidential election, possibly at [Vladimir] Putin’s urging.” Russia doesn’t need any encouragement from Trump to spring an October surprise on Biden, no doubt regarding it as payback for the president’s support for Ukraine. But Trump is, of course, friendlier with Putin and Kim Jong Un than Biden is, and as president, he’d be far less likely to intervene in both countries’ spheres of influence.
He’d be the direct beneficiary of the October surprise they’re allegedly planning. What, precisely, would stop him from reaching out to either country and pledging his gratitude in advance if they decide to follow through on it?
An allegation before Election Day from U.S. intelligence that Trump had egged on some foreign malefactor to cause problems for America would explode like a grenade in the middle of the campaign. It would be a rerun of the Russiagate saga of 2017, except with suspicions of the other party’s malevolence an order of magnitude higher now than they were then. Outraged Republicans would insist that “the deep state” had unleashed its biggest hoax yet on Trump. (Unless Trump turned around and confirmed that he’d done it, I mean, at which point Republicans would pivot instantly to arguing that he’d done nothing wrong.) Democrats would counter that here was the smoking gun proving once and for all that Trump has been colluding with the international order’s most degenerate strongmen to empower authoritarianism globally.
It would be bedlam, unthinkable in any other era yet quite imaginable this summer or fall, I think. I’m already counting the hours. Things are different now.
The Hill: The arrest of Pavel Durov: A geopolitical power play in the Digital Age – by Pari Esfandiari, opinion contributor – 09/05/24 9:45 AM ET
On Aug. 23, French authorities arrested Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of Telegram, at Le Bourget Airport near Paris. This unexpected event has sent ripples through the tech industry and raised significant questions about the intersection of digital privacy, state power and global geopolitics.
According to French officials, Durov was arrested on a warrant issued by France’s L’office mineurs, an agency responsible for preventing violence against minors. The charges against him include allegations of failing to curb the use of Telegram for criminal activities such as cyberbullying, drug trafficking, organized crime and the promotion of extremism. Telegram, with its encrypted messaging services, has been a platform of choice for various actors, including those involved in illicit activities, which French authorities argue Durov has not adequately addressed.
The geopolitical implications of Durov’s detention cannot be overlooked. Telegram has been a critical tool in several global hotspots, most notably the Ukraine conflict, where it has been used by both military units and civilians for communication and information dissemination. Russia’s immediate response, demanding consular access and criticizing French authorities, underscores the international tensions at play.
Durov, who holds multiple citizenships, including Russian, has long been a thorn in the side of the Russian government due to his refusal to comply with demands for user data from his platform. His detention in a NATO member state like France could be interpreted as part of broader Western efforts to counter Russian influence, particularly in the digital realm.
Speculation also abounds regarding possible involvement of other intelligence agencies, including Israel’s, given its sophisticated cyber capabilities and interest in monitoring or controlling platforms like Telegram, which both allies and adversaries might find useful. Any involvement by Israel, whether through intelligence sharing or cyber operations, would add further complexity to the geopolitical landscape surrounding Durov’s detention.
Durov’s decision to travel to France despite the risks involved also raises questions. Some speculate that it may have been a calculated risk, possibly linked to broader negotiations or a belief that he could resolve legal issues there. The situation is further complicated by the mysterious disappearance of 24-year-old Yuli Vavilova, a Dubai-based crypto-coach from Moscow who was with Durov at the time of his detention. Speculation is rampant, with theories ranging from her involvement in espionage to the possibility of a honey trap orchestrated by intelligence agencies, adding layers of intrigue to the unfolding events.
Durov’s detention comes amidst increasing pressure from European regulators on tech companies to comply with the Digital Services Act, which demands stringent content moderation to prevent the misuse of platforms for illegal purposes. France’s actions suggest a hard-line approach to enforcing these regulations, particularly against companies perceived as not fully cooperating with European standards.
This event serves as a stark reminder of the delicate balance between public safety and individual freedoms, particularly the right to privacy. Telegram is known for its strong encryption and for Durov’s commitment to protecting user data from government intrusion, making it a vital tool for activists, journalists and everyday users who value privacy. But it has also attracted criminals and extremists, who exploit its secure communication features.
One significant concern arising from this situation is the potential for the French government to gain access to Telegram’s databases. Although Telegram is designed to be highly secure, with servers distributed across multiple jurisdictions, Durov’s detention could lead to increased pressure on the company to comply with data access requests.
If French authorities gain access to user data, it could impact millions of users worldwide, particularly those involved in sensitive communications, such as political activists, journalists and government officials who rely on Telegram’s encryption for secure messaging.
This case raises broader concerns about the future of digital privacy and freedom. If governments can hold tech executives personally responsible for their platforms’ users, it may lead to increased self-censorship by companies or even a decline in the availability of secure communication tools. This could have a chilling effect on free speech, especially in authoritarian regimes where platforms like Telegram are essential for organizing dissent.
For the tech industry, this incident signals a new era of accountability, in which CEOs and founders could face legal consequences for their platforms’ failures to comply with local laws. This is particularly significant for companies operating across multiple jurisdictions with varying legal standards. The pressure to adhere to stringent regulations may stifle innovation, especially in sectors like encryption and cybersecurity, where the balance between security and oversight is inherently delicate.
Durov’s detention bears significant similarities to the 2018 apprehension of Meng Wanzhou, the CFO of Huawei, in Canada. Both cases involve high-profile tech industry figures whose detentions have sparked international controversies and raised questions about the motivations behind them. Meng’s detention was widely viewed as part of the U.S.-China trade war, with Huawei at the center of concerns over 5G technology and cybersecurity. Likewise, Durov’s situation can be seen within the context of global power struggles, particularly between Russia and the West, and the role of technology in modern warfare and statecraft.
Both cases illustrate how technology and geopolitics are increasingly intertwined. Meng’s detention had far-reaching consequences for Huawei and China’s global tech ambitions, just as Durov’s could impact Telegram’s operations and the broader tech landscape, especially concerning encrypted communications.
Just as Meng’s case symbolized the escalating tech rivalry between the U.S. and China, Durov’s detention could mark a key moment in the ongoing struggle over digital sovereignty and the future of the internet.
Pari Esfandiari is the co-founder and president at the Global TechnoPolitics Forum, a member of the at-large advisory committee at ICANN representing the European region, and a member of APCO Worldwide’s advisory board.
Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Donald Trump has overtly taken the side of dictators including Putin, Xi, Orbán, and Kim over the past eight years, most likely because he admires the way each has crushed efforts toward democracy and ruled their respective nations with an iron fist.
Now US intelligence agencies say their big worry is that one or more of these nations will reciprocate Trump’s love by launching some sort of October Surprise to push voters closer to Trump in time for this fall’s election. Such an action could swing our election toward Trump, but also risks provoking a third world war.
The phrase October Surprise, of course, refers to the successful deal that the Reagan campaign cut with Iran’s Ayatollah’s government to hold the American hostages in the US Embassy in Tehran until after the 1980 election to destroy President Jimmy Carter’s chances. Both Iran’s then-president, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, and the former Lt. Governor of Texas, Ben Barnes, have verified the plot, the latter last year in The New York Times.
An earlier (unknown until the past two decades) plot by the campaign of candidate Richard Nixon to blow up the 1968 Paris peace talks and thus sabotage President Johnson’s deal with the Vietnamese was the first known successful Republican effort to use treason to steal an election. It qualified for the October Surprise label, but wasn’t known until well after Reagan’s efforts had earned the title.
And, of course, there was the October Surprise in Florida in 2000 when Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s administration got the 68% Black and Hispanic list of Texas felons from his brother, Texas Governor George W. Bush, and used them to purge tens of thousands of Black and Hispanic Florida voters with similar names from the Florida voter rolls in the months immediately before that year’s election.
George “won” the 2000 election by 537 votes (he lost the national popular vote by a half-million), although the Florida Supreme Court-ordered recount that was blocked by five corrupt Republicans on the US Supreme Court would have revealed that setup and several other ways Jeb had rigged the election that year for his brother, and put Al Gore into the White House.
Two of the three October Surprise events employed by Republican candidates for president involved colluding with foreign governments to harm a Democratic candidate; Reagan’s hit on Carter was particularly treasonous and effective. Nixon’s — appropriate to remember on Memorial Day — caused the death of an additional 20,000+ American GIs in Vietnam.
So, it’s entirely reasonable to assume that Trump — still in touch with Putin, Kim, and Xi, even if only through media proclamations — is either planning or expecting help this fall from his autocratic pals.
Putin, desperate for more weapons to crush democracy in Ukraine, has formed a strong alliance over the past year with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, trading battlefield weapons for submarine and other technology that Kim can use along with nuclear weapons to threaten the US.
In an NBC News article from May 24th titled “Are Russia and North Korea planning an ‘October surprise’ that aids Trump?” reporters Cortney Kube and Carol E. Lee note that there could be serious consequences arising from the fact that North Korea is today giving Russia more weaponry to use against Ukraine than all of Europe has been able to provide to President Zelenskyy:
“U.S. officials are also bracing for North Korea to potentially take its most provocative military actions in a decade close to the U.S. presidential election, possibly at Putin’s urging…
“The increasingly close relationship between Putin and Kim represents a major shift from when Russia worked with the U.S. in the past to try to rein in North Korea. Now, Moscow is using its veto power on the U.N. Security Council to give Pyongyang cover to evade sanctions enforcement measures intended to constrain its nuclear program.”
North Korea firing missiles into the demilitarized zone between it and South Korea to help Trump could represent a major escalation of tensions in the region, as would an October nuclear test or attack on South Korea’s border islands. It could also precipitate a major war in the region with the potential to spread worldwide.
While China has, in the past, counseled Kim to refrain from overly bombastic or provocative behavior to keep tensions in the region low, their increasingly bellicose actions and rhetoric toward Taiwan suggest they may welcome regional chaos which Xi could then use as a pretext to attack that island nation.
“By weakening U.S. standing abroad and democracy at home, Trump would offer Xi more opportunities than Biden to extend Chinese influence and win hearts and minds within the developing world.”
Our government has noticed: Three months ago, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) published their Annual Threat Assessment. It was unambiguous about what they’re already seeing in the works for this election year:
“The PRC [People’s Republic of China] may attempt to influence the U.S. elections in 2024 at some level because of its desire to sideline critics of China and magnify U.S. societal divisions. PRC actors’ have increased their capabilities to conduct covert influence operations and disseminate disinformation. … The PRC aims to sow doubts about U.S. leadership, undermine democracy, and extend Beijing’s influence.”
Similarly, The New York Times reported last month that China — in a move reminiscent of Putin’s millions of Internet Research Agency troll posts promoting Trump on Facebook leading up to the 2016 election — is all in on using social media, including, apparently, TikTok, to crush Biden and lift Trump into the White House:
“Some of the Chinese accounts impersonate fervent Trump fans, including one on X that purported to be ‘a father, husband and son’ who was ‘MAGA all the way!!’ The accounts mocked Mr. Biden’s age and shared fake images of him in a prison jumpsuit, or claimed that Mr. Biden was a Satanist pedophile while promoting Mr. Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ slogan.”
Any of these actions by China could be a trigger for an international conflagration pitting America and Asian democracies against an axis of China, North Korea, and Russia. If Europe jumped in to help, we’d be in the middle of World War III faster than most imagine possible.
Another hostile dictatorship that believes a Trump presidency would work to its advantage is Iran, which has worked with Republican presidential candidates before. It’s today run by the heirs to the regime that successfully handed the 1980 election to Reagan, and tried to help Trump get elected in 2020.
“Ahead of the U.S. election in 2024, Iran may attempt to conduct influence operations aimed at U.S. interests, including targeting U.S. elections, having demonstrated a willingness and capability to do so in the past. During the U.S. election cycle in 2020, Iranian cyber actors obtained or attempted to obtain U.S. voter information, sent threatening emails to voters, and disseminated disinformation about the election.
“The same Iranian actors have evolved their activities and developed a new set of techniques, combining cyber and influence capabilities, that Iran could deploy during the U.S. election cycle in 2024.”
Given Iran’s role in supporting Hamas’ brutal raid on Israel last October and the increased pressure the Biden administration is putting them under, disrupting our election to put Trump — no fan of democracy — into office apparently makes a lot of sense to the violent mullahs clinging to power in that country. At the very least, Trump may dial back (as he did when president before) the efforts of Voice of America and other US propaganda and outreach efforts aimed at destabilizing the Iranian regime.
Combine Iran’s efforts with those of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu — who is both openly hostile to President Biden (as he was to President Obama) and fond of Trump — and an expansion of conflict in the Middle East also has the potential to both influence the US election and lead to a larger international war.
Netanyahu, under indictment for bribery and corruption with the cases against him paused until he’s no longer in office, has a powerful personal incentive to drag out the war (and the deaths of Gazans) just to stay out of prison. An alliance with a second Trump presidency would be political gold for him.
Every time Netanyahu commits another war crime or gives America and the international community the middle finger over his use of famine as an instrument of war, more young Americans peel away from Biden in frustration. While they probably won’t vote for Trump, polling from 2020 shows that if they hadn’t shown up for Biden in that election, Trump would have held onto the presidency. And Netanyahu knows it.
This past week, Trump told a group of wealthy Jewish donors that if student protests of Netanyahu’s policies in Gaza happened during his presidency, he would not only arrest them but he would strip them American citizenship and deport them from the country. It’s his most explicit shout out so far to Netanyahu, and will certainly encourage the Prime Minister to continue to ignore President Biden and enrage the Democratic base.
Finally, Russia’s President Putin knows that a second Trump term will be like a gift from the gods. He’s lost over a half-million soldiers and a massive amounts of equipment in his brutal war against Ukraine, and is facing rising anger at home. Trump, who has essentially promised to cut off US support for that besieged nation, could literally save Putin’s life if his generals are thinking of taking him out the way Hitler’s tried to do.
To that end, Russia and Saudi Arabia recently collaborated to cut oil production by 1.4 million barrels a day in an effort to drive up gas prices here in the US, just like they did in October/November of 2022. Since Trump let the Saudis buy the largest refinery in America (at Port Arthur, Texas), expect gas prices to be over $5/gallon this fall.
The stakes are incredibly high for Putin; he may well think an attack against a NATO country, if not answered with a swift, massive response, would reveal weakness in the Biden administration that could help Trump this fall. And if NATO does respond vigorously, that could toss us into WWIII.
Most recently, Trump shouted out to Putin in an echo of Reagan’s traitorous embrace of Iran, essentially asking him to humiliate Biden by holding onto imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich until after the election. This has to encourage Russia’s truculence in the face of international pressure to stop killing Ukrainian civilians.
Both the American Civil War and World War II came about when explicitly authoritarian leaders used military force to try to violently destroy democratic nations’ way of life. A predatory new axis has formed including Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China that is every bit as opposed to representative government as was Hitler’s Third Reich.
And Trump empowered them by killing the Iran nuclear deal President Obama had negotiated, allowing them to resume making nukes; embracing Kim and Xi; and giving top secret information to Putin.
Meanwhile, three of those nations are actively involved in propaganda operations — principally exploiting social media and Republican politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene and JD Vance — to denigrate democracy and majority rule and elevate oligarchy and strongman rule.
Will one of these “help Trump get elected while advancing our own interests” scenarios by one or more of these axis nations lead to the end of democracy in America or a third world war? At this point it’s too early to tell, but EU and Asian democracies are increasingly worried about that exact scenario.
In war, things can change suddenly in ways nobody anticipated; events frequently spiral out of control (as did the events leading to WWI). We all need to stay alert and remain outspoken about the dangers Trump represents, and do what we can to support democracy worldwide.
The Hill News.
