Hillary Clinton warned this year’s October surprise will damage voters’ impression of Vice President Kamala Harris.
The former Secretary of State lost her 2016 bid for the White House to former President Donald Trump. Less than two weeks before that election, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced it was examining emails sent and received by Clinton on a private server during her time in Barack Obama’s administration – prompting widespread concerns about her ethics and national cybersecurity.
During an interview with Margaret Hoover of “Firing Line,” the Democrat issued several predictions about freedom in the United States.
“I think freedom of the press is like at the top of the list of those freedoms, those necessary elements of maintaining democracy against autocracy,” said Clinton. “The trends are going in the wrong direction with the targeting of journalists, the intimidation of journalists, the use of kind of reverse psychology to call what journalists produce ‘fake’ or ‘disinformation,’ as opposed to the narrative from the government, the demagogue, the autocrat.”
She accused Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, of “attacking the press on a regular basis,” of “inciting the crowds that come to his rallies to turn on the press that are actually there to cover it,” of denying “the reality that the press is reporting,’ and of only speaking with “outlets that are his political allies.”
Clinton said she believed it is hard for the “press to really grasp the danger” a second Trump administration poses and warned that the “digital airwaves” would be full of misinformation.
“The press needs a consistent narrative about the danger that Trump poses,” she said. “People need to be woken up and given the facts about what he has done, is saying and would do.”
Clinton warned that “something will happen in October, as it always does” to influence this election in the final weeks.
“There will be concerted efforts to distort and pervert Kamala Harris, who she is, what she stands for, what she’s done,” she said. “I don’t know what it’s going to be, but it will be something and we’ll have to work very, very hard to make sure that it is exposed as the lie that it is.”
The term October Surprise gained popularity in the 1980s when Jimmy Carter struggled to negotiate the release of Iranian hostages. His potential success – which never came to fruition – was the predicted plot twist that could have swung the election in his favor.
“Afterward, there were suggestions that Reagan’s campaign conspired with the Iranians to hold the hostages through the election,” noted David Greenberg, a history and journalism professor at Rutgers University. “This gambit, though never proven, came to be referred to as the October Surprise. Now the term refers to any late-breaking major news that upends the presidential election.”
The 2016 presidential election had two late surprises. In addition to the controversy involving Clinton’s emails, a recording of Trump discussing women with TV host Billy Bush that was deemed graphic was published by The Washington Post.
The recording did not sufficiently deter voters from supporting Trump, who received more electoral votes than Clinton.
