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Trump Didn’t Wait for an October Surprise. He Hired One.
Katie Zacharia didn’t even last a week as White House press secretary. But the damage ha been done.
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Kristoffer Ealy is a political scientist, political analyst, and professor in Southern California. He teaches American Government and political behavior, with a focus on political psychology, voting behavior, and political socialization. Subscribe to his Substack, The Thinking Class with Professor Ealy.
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I have heard of October surprises. Every political junkie has. An October surprise is that deliciously inconvenient political bombshell that drops in the final weeks before a November election, sending campaign managers into cardiac arrest, communications directors scrambling for explanations, and candidates suddenly discovering the importance of spending more time with their families. The phrase took hold during the 1980 presidential election, and ever since, October surprises have become something of an American political tradition.
George W. Bush had his old drunk-driving arrest surface days before the 2000 election. Donald Trump had the Access Hollywood tape in 2016, when America learned that the Republican nominee thought sexual assault sounded like a perfectly reasonable perk of celebrity. Usually, campaigns spend October worrying about what devastating information their opponents might uncover. They have researchers digging through decades of records, consultants preparing emergency talking points, and lawyers standing by in case somebody discovers their candidate once committed a felony, fathered a secret family, or spent an afternoon with Jeffrey Epstein. It’s the political equivalent of waiting for someone to throw a grenade through your living room window.
But Donald Trump, a man who has never encountered a perfectly functioning disaster he couldn’t make considerably worse, decided to revolutionize the entire concept. Why spend October nervously waiting for Democrats to uncover some embarrassing scandal when you can manufacture one yourself? Why let the opposition research department do all the heavy lifting when you have the authority to appoint your very own catastrophe? Trump looked at the Republican Party’s already miserable political situation, surveyed the approaching midterms, and concluded that what his administration desperately needed was another public relations emergency.
And because this man has never believed in doing anything halfway, he personally hired one, gave her access to the White House briefing room, and allowed the entire country to watch the experiment collapse in real time. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Katie Zacharia, the first October surprise to come with a federal job title and an introductory press briefing.
Zacharia joins an increasingly distinguished collection of MAGA employees whose White House careers have had roughly the same life expectancy as a mosquito at a backyard barbecue. Sean Spicer, Trump’s first press secretary, spent six miserable months defending presidential nonsense with the frantic desperation of a man trying to convince his wife that the lipstick on his collar came from a particularly affectionate cashier at CVS. Anthony Scaramucci, affectionately known as the Mooch, lasted 11 days as communications director before giving The New Yorker a profanity-filled interview that made him sound like a cocaine-fueled character from Goodfellas who had accidentally wandered into the West Wing.
Michael Flynn made it 24 days as national security adviser before his conversations with the Russian ambassador helped send him packing. Reince Priebus got thrown out as chief of staff during the same week Scaramucci was busy turning the administration into an HBO crime drama. Tom Price resigned from Health and Human Services after discovering that taxpayers were less enthusiastic about financing his private-jet lifestyle than he was. Stephanie Grisham somehow managed nine months as White House press secretary without holding a single press briefing, which is the professional equivalent of being hired as a lifeguard and refusing to acknowledge the existence of water...
