by Vijaya Chandrasoma

An October Surprise is defined as “an unexpected political event or revelation in the month before a presidential election, especially one that seems intended to influence the outcome”. Since 1980, there have been a few “October Surprises” which may have changed the history of the nation.

The phrase originated in 1980, during the presidential election season of that year. Militants in Iran had seized 66 American citizens from the US Embassy in 1979, and held 52 of them hostage for over a year. Jimmy Carter was the incumbent president at the time. His failure to have the hostages released was the main reason he was losing in the polls to Ronald Reagan. The hostage crisis occurred after the Iran’s Islamic revolution and the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty. Carter had planned to negotiate a last-minute release of the hostages which would win him the election. It never happened.

We would like to send our best wishes to the 39^th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, who celebrated his 100^th birthday on Tuesday, October 1. One of the finest presidents and human beings in history, he was cheated of a well-deserved second term by the doubtful political machinations of a third-rate movie star, who proved to be a fourth-rate president. Ronald Reagan began the process of dismantling a thriving middle class by cutting taxes on corporations and the super-wealthy, with his now debunked trickle-down policies of “Reagonomics”.

Reagan’s campaign was suspected to have conspired with the Iranians not to release the hostages till after the election was finalized. This gambit, though never proved, was referred to as the October Surprise, which now refers to any late-breaking news that upends the results of a presidential election.

President Carter continues to personify the highest standards of excellence for compassionate, productive, Christian leadership to this very day. We wish him all good health and happiness in the future.

There have been a few other mostly mild surprises. George H.W. Bush was running behind Clinton in the polls in 1992. The news that broke in October 1992, that his former defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, was indicted in the Iran-Contra scandal, may have cost him a second term.

The Iran-Contra affair was a political scandal in Reagan’s administration between 1981 and 1986 when senior officials illegally and secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was subject to an embargo. The proceeds from the sale were to be used to fund the Contras, an anti-Sandinista rebel group in Nicaragua.

News broke in October 2000 that Bush junior had been arrested for DUI (Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol) in 1976, but his rival, Vice-President Al Gore refused to make an issue of this misdemeanor. In any event, the Republican Supreme Court awarded Bush a controversial election.

In October 2016, there were two doozies. On October 7, 2016, one month before the election, the Washington Post published a video and article about then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, bragging to NBC television host Billy Bush about his various and lewd experiences assaulting women. The “Access Hollywood” tape was so named because Trump and Bush were on their way to film an episode of an NBC television show of that title.

Trump was explicitly and disgustingly describing his modus operandi of seducing married women. He would start kissing them, saying “I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything….Grab them by their genitals” (though he used a more vulgar feline term). The Hillary Clinton camp was elated at this breaking news, certain that it would a clinch an election in which she was already showing a handsome lead in the polls.

Clinton got her October Surprise, when FBI Director James Comey made a statement, 11 days before the election, that the Bureau was investigating into the 30,000 deleted emails from Hillary’s personal server, a technical infringement, when she was Secretary of State in the Obama administration. Comey violated election laws, which prohibit government officials from releasing any information concerning presidential candidates 60 days before the election.

It was especially galling because Comey retracted his statement, that the Bureau had found no illegality in Hillary’s emails, two days before the election. It was too late. Voters had already cast their early ballots, or decided to vote against Hillary. Trump made political capital out of Comey’s announcements, in an effort to minimize his sexual indiscretions. Hillary lost the election. The rest, as they say, is history. History which has completely changed the landscape of US politics. For the execrable worse.

A surprise seems to be brewing with the East Coast dockworkers’ first large-scale strike in nearly 50 years, demanding huge pay raises, checks on automation and employment contracts for six years

The dispute does not involve the White House. The International Longshoremen’s Association Union, representing 45,000 port workers, has been negotiating with the United States Maritime Alliance employer group for a new six-year contract. Negotiations are ongoing, but no agreement has been reached as the strike reaches its fourth day. There is little doubt that such a strike, even for a few days, will cause major supply chain disruptions. We can only hope that the strike is settled before it causes havoc with the economy, for which Trump will blame the Biden administration.

Hurricane Helene has devastated parts of Georgia and North Carolina, with entire communities being destroyed. The death toll has risen to over 210, with hundreds still missing, many caught in historic flooding throughout the Southeastern states. Power connections are being restored, but 1.3 million people are still without power from Florida to Georgia.

President Biden immediately called Georgia Governor, Brian Kemp, and offered “whatever he needs”. He ordered the Defense Department to deploy up to 1,000 active-duty soldiers to reinforce North Carolina’s National Guard. He also approved 100% Federal costs of debris removal, first responders, search and rescue operations, shelters, mass feeding and other emergency measures.

President Biden visited North Carolina, while Vice-President Harris travelled to neighboring Georgia, both on Wednesday.

Amidst bipartisan praise for the immediate response from the Biden administration, Trump predictably politicized the disaster. He lied that President Biden and VP Harris “are universally being given poor grades for the way they are handling the Hurricane, especially in North Carolina”. A downright lie.

The Biden administration has received bipartisan praise from political leaders in all the affected states. Every governor in the Southeastern states, Republican and Democratic, has praised the administration’s prompt response, naming Biden in particular. Republican Governor of South Carolina, Henry McMaster said at a press conference that federal assistance had “been superb”. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Red Cross are using all their resources to help the victims of the worst Hurricane to hit the US since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

In view of the predicted increase in natural disasters caused by climate change, this hurricane was hardly a surprise. But it may have deleterious effects on the November election, as many of the polling booths in North Carolina have been washed away, and voters may not be able to cast their ballots for a variety of reasons.

The Vice-Presidential Debate between VP candidates Tim Walz and JD Vance on Tuesday, October 2 provided no surprises at all.

Perhaps The Atlantic described it best as “a vision of what American politics could be without the distorting gravitational field generated by Donald Trump”.

It was an unexpectedly civil event, with both candidates generally showing respect for each other, unlike the one-sided Presidential brawl between the heavyweights in September.

Vance kept the Republican flag flying with the usual number of lies about abortion and cats and dogs in Springfield. There were a few really audacious lies, when he claimed that “Trump saved Obamacare”, President Obama’s Affordable Care Plan, which Trump had been trying to repeal on over 60 separate occasions. Vance also did not answer the direct question – Who won the 2020 election? which he ignored. More ominously, Vance kept silent when asked if he would have, had he been Donald Trump’s Vice-President in 2020, overturned the Electoral College certification for the presidency. Silence signifies assent, so Vance silently admitted that he would have violated his oath to the constitution.

He also made the preposterous statement that “Trump had handed over power peacefully on January 20, 2021, just as we had done for 250 years” (which is true only if you have amnesia about the violent coup on January 6). Actually, he was unable to answer many of these questions, as he was performing for an audience of one.

Vance perhaps won the debate on a more polished performance of lying about his lies with an admirably straight face. Walz prevailed on substance, though he at times behaved like the knucklehead he himself admitted he was. So we can call it a draw, one which will make no impact on a very close election.

There have been a few mild surprises. Donald Trump lives in an alternative Teflon universe, in which no criminal or reprehensible acts he commits seem to have any effect on his Republican cult. Their devotion to a convicted felon remains unshaken in the face of irrefutable evidence of wrongdoing, that would have tanked the reputation and career of any other politician.

Special Counsel Jack Smith made public a 165-page filing which includes “mountains of new evidence” of Donald Trump’s alleged efforts to subvert the constitutional transfer of power after the 2020 presidential election. Smith maintains these new “mountains of evidence” are incriminatingly high enough to hurdle over even the high bar of immunity that the Supreme Court had provided for Trump in a recent highly partisan ruling.

The new brief argued that Trump’s conduct was private in nature; he was acting in the capacity of a candidate for the presidency and not as the incumbent, defeated (lame duck) president. He was therefore not covered by immunity. Smith’s brief argues that “Trump’s scheme to remain in power for a second term was a private criminal effort”, and that “Trump tried to overturn the election in his capacity as a candidate, not as the incumbent president”.

Some amazing revelations in the brief displayed the ultimate cruelty of Donald Trump. While he was doing nothing at the White House for 187 minutes when his mob was rioting at the Capitol, he was told that his Vice-President, Mike Pence’s life was in danger. His response: “So what!”. He is also recorded as having told his wife, Melania, daughter, Ivanka and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell!”

The only purpose of this new brief is that it will provide, perhaps against election laws, fresh evidence of Trump’s guilt to the public. News that will probably be met with indifference and apathy. Trump’s camp will, of course, call this another episode in the longest witch hunt in history.

This will not count as even a mild surprise.

So far, no other major October Surprise has appeared on the horizon, though these are early days. Let’s hope it stays that way, but my money is on an increasingly desperate Trump trying some extraordinary stunt of contrived violence, maybe against himself again, but more likely, an assault on a high-ranking Democrat. Violence is the only language Trump and his cult speak fluently.

This year’s October Surprise is the same surprise that has been America’s nightmare since November, 2021. How a twice impeached, adjudicated rapist and fraud, a convicted felon awaiting sentence on 34 felonies, and three more impending trials on serious crimes (obstruction of justice, espionage, sedition) against him, is not only out of prison, but amazingly is a lively contender for another term at the Oval Office.

Maybe the new evidence against Trump, and the unhinged behavior he displays day after day, will finally persuade independents and moderate Republicans to see the light and give Vice-President Harris a landslide in November that even Trump will not be able to deny.

We can only hope that Americans will finally see the threat that Trump provides to Democracy, which his Party has clearly outlined in “Project 2025 – Mandate for Leadership. The Conservative Promise”. The document, created by the radical-red Heritage Foundation is a 925-page policy “wish list” for the next Republican president, “a proposal that would expand presidential power and impose an ultra-conservative social vision”.

A manifesto, much like Hitler’s Mein Kampf (My Struggle), which outlines the political ideology and future plans for the United States, based on Hitler’s Utopia of a nation of Aryan, white, blonde, blue-eyed Germans, after Trump is inaugurated as the 47^th and last president in January 2025. With one difference. The vermin targeted for the “Final Solution” in Hitler’s Germany were the Jews. The vermin targeted for elimination – in concentration camps, by mass deportations – are the brown skinned-immigrants, legal and illegal, who are poisoning the blood of Trump’s Utopia of a conservative, white, European, Christian America.