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An October surprise is usually defined as the well-known (and more often left-wing) tactic of manufacturing or unloading a news story right before voting to surprise a rival without allowing them time sufficiently to respond or recover.
Think of the last-minute bombshell disclosure, five days before the 2000 election, that candidate George W. Bush had been cited for drunk driving over a quarter-century earlier. That surprise may have cost Bush the popular vote that year.
Sometimes, an incumbent can use his powers of office to warp the election. President Joe Biden benefited before the 2022 midterm elections when leftist activists leaked the impending Supreme Court repeal of Roe v. Wade.
Closer to the actual voting, Biden sought to cancel hundreds of billions of dollars of student debt owed to the federal government. He also began draining the strategic petroleum reserve to lower gas prices (as he is doing again this election year, as well). No wonder the predicted Republican midterm red wave ended up a tiny ripple.
More often, October surprises are more ad hominem and unleashed on a rival candidate’s supposedly previously undisclosed failings.
At the end of the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton’s team leaked news of her purchased bogus “Steele Dossier” as supposed proof of Trump-Russian “collusion.”
On the eve of the last 2020 presidential debate, Biden delegated now Secretary of State Antony Blinken to work with former interim CIA Director Mike Morrell to round up “51 former intelligence authorities.” They were to lie that the incriminating Hunter Biden laptop was likely a product of a Russian intelligence “disinformation” operation.
The ruse worked—turning potential proof of Biden family corruption into a replay of the fake 2016 Trump-Russian collusion hoax.
This time around, apparently the Harris campaign could not wait until October or early November to spring their surprises.
Perhaps the Harris campaign’s impatience is due to Democratically-inspired radical changes to state voting laws.
Remember that in 2020, under the cover of COVID-19, Democrat legal teams got state laws altered to institutionalize early and mail-in voting in key states. Those changes reduced our once iconic Election Day into a mere construct when only 30% of voters cast their ballots.
So, former October surprises—both the embarrassing disclosures and the use of incumbency to warp the election—are now becoming earlier and more frequent preemptive “September” shocks.
Suddenly, the Federal Reserve Bank, just 50 days before the election, decided that interest rates that spiraled under Biden-Harris in reaction to their hyperinflation right now need to be slashed—as supposed proof that the Biden-Harris inflation is now over and the economy needs a sudden revving up.
Just as abruptly, on Sept. 23, just 43 days before Election Day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was flown by the Biden-Harris administration—at U.S. government expense—into the United States.
More amazingly, Zelenskyy landed first in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania, where most observers believe the currently deadlocked election will be decided.
No surprise, Zelenskyy immediately toured a Pennsylvania munitions plant making artillery shells likely destined for his Ukraine—at a time when the state’s voters are concerned about job losses.
The Harris-Biden administration was sending the not-so-subtle message that providing billions of dollars in arms to Zelenskyy’s Ukraine translates into jobs for voting Pennsylvanians.
But that was not all to this crass September surprise.
In an interview with the left-wing, pro-Biden-Harris New Yorker magazine, Zelenskyy plunged right into the current neck-and-neck presidential race. He trashed Harris’ rival, former President Donald Trump, as someone who “doesn’t really know how to stop the war even if he might think he knows how.”
Not satisfied with that putdown, the Ukrainian president hit even harder Trump’s running mate and vice presidential candidate, JD Vance, as “dangerous” and “too radical.”
The left still talks nonstop about nonexistent 2016 Trump-Russia “collusion” and equally bogus 2020 Trump-Russian “disinformation.”
Yet it would be hard to define any clearer “election interference” than the current Zelenskyy surprise.
After all, has any vice president incumbent running for president ever flown in a foreign leader on a U.S. military jet to the one key U.S. state that will likely decide the impending election?
And furthermore, has any paraded him around that state’s weapons export plant while he trashed current Vice President Kamala Harris’ two opponents with invectives like “dangerous” and “radical?”
And why else was Zelenskyy’s Pennsylvania trip arranged by the Biden-Harris administration but to coincide with the traditional dates that mail-in and early-voting balloting start?
Yet were the Zelenskyy sudden Pennsylvania drop-in and his crude domestic politicking and trashing of Trump and Vance all that wise?
After all, Harris’ opponent Trump had just escaped an assassination attempt from a pro-Ukrainian gunman furious over Trump’s purported preference for a negotiated settlement to the 30-month-long, 1-million-casualties war.
Add it all up, and sometimes September surprises backfire—when they appear to voters as crude and insulting rather than just conniving.
Originally Published by the Tribute Content Agency.
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The post Political ‘October Surprises’ Happening Earlier as ‘September Shocks’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.
REAL CLEAR POLITICS—For eight years now, Democrats have bemoaned interference in American elections. The national security apparatus of the United States has been warning about influence campaigns. The media has done so as well. Editorials and anchors have decried Russian interference.
They are all strangely silent over the latest foreign interference in our elections.
That would be President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, on the American taxpayer’s dime, going to—surprise, surprise—highly contested Pennsylvania to thank munitions manufacturing employees. In an interview, he also attacked Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance as “too radical.”
You and I get to call Vance a radical and bad on economic views as a protectionist, but Zelenskyy is a foreign leader who should shut his American welfare-subsidized mouth.
I am a staunch supporter of funding Ukraine and supporting Zelenskyy. The Russians invaded the country. We had prior commitments to protecting Ukraine’s sovereignty after they surrendered their nuclear arsenal to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Stopping Russian aggression and expansion is good. It is also good to have live fire tests of our weapons systems against the best of Russia’s, which we are getting.
But Zelenskyy risks everything by doing what amounts to a campaign stop in Pennsylvania, and the Biden administration was deeply foolish for putting Zelenskyy in that position. Undoubtedly, Zelenskyy thinks he has nothing to lose because he presumed, based on American press biases, that Donald Trump would shut down all funding for Ukraine immediately.
That actually grossly misstates Trump’s position. Trump actually was much firmer against Russia than Barack Obama was, but you would never know it from most press reports. Trump’s sanctions on Russians were more aggressive and he was more willing to deport Russian government-related officials than Obama.
But now? After Zelenskyy goes to a swing state to attack Trump’s vice presidential candidate, he better really pray Kamala Harris wins.
It was political, policy, and presidential malpractice for Joe Biden to let Zelenskyy go down that road. Biden has compromised support for Ukraine by tying it directly to a partisan presidential election. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is now demanding Zelenskyy fire his Ukrainian ambassador to the United States for signing off on the trip, which Johnson rightly notes appears to be a political stunt at American taxpayer expense.
Notice just how approving so much of the press corps and Democrats are who regularly wail about election interference in the United States. They seem to be just fine with it if it helps Democrats or, at least, hurts Trump.
Do not be surprised when more Republicans turn against Ukraine and fewer care about the very real issue of electoral interference by foreign governments. It looks like the Democrats and much of the press really are fine with foreign interference in the presidential election if it is for the Democrats.
The precedent here is disturbing. One need not have much imagination to see Trump cajoling a foreign leader like the prime minister of Israel to barnstorm the United States for Trump. The media and Democrats would complain, but they set the precedent.
The Ukraine war is a serious issue. Russia invaded a nation and wishes to rebuild a sphere of influence with the help of an Eastern Axis of China, Iran, and North Korea. The fight in Ukraine is a fight about the future, and one that costs the United States a tiny portion of its budget and zero American lives. In return for keeping Russian ambitions in check, we have gathered remarkable intelligence about the collaboration of the Eastern Axis and its ability to design and deploy weapons.
Most of our money goes to Ukraine in the form of loans, which European powers guarantee. The money then comes back to the United States in the form of weapons purchases. We give Ukraine our old stuff and build new stuff for ourselves. All the while, we keep the Russians in check.
Zelenskyy’s visit jeopardizes that and his own fight, all because the Biden administration decided to politicize the war for their benefit in a swing state. Shame on them.
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On the latest episode of “The Tony Kinnett Cast,” we bring the metaphorical first-aid kit to the knife fight that has become this presidential election.
With six weeks until that sacred American voting day, the swing states have reached a fever pitch. With Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy touring the commonwealth of Pennsylvania alongside its Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, things are anything but normal.
Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump gives $100 to a mother of three in a Pennsylvania grocery store, and pundits on the Left scream, “Election interference!” When do private actions shift into electoral moves, and are there any common standards we can agree on?
Bob Unanue, the CEO of Goya Foods, stops by to talk about the release of his new book, “Blessed,” and the shift of Hispanic communities in the United States—a shift in how they’re perceived, how they vote, and how they’re trafficked.
Finally, we have a heart-to-heart about political scandals and what to do (and not to do) in a skeletons-out-of-the-closet, five-alarm forest fire of social media outrage.
Catch the live radio show and livestream weeknights at 7 p.m. EDT on The Daily Signal’s YouTube, X, or Facebook—and subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode or exclusive interview!
The post WATCH: The Double Standards on Election Interference appeared first on The Daily Signal.
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