October Surprises just aren’t what they used to be.
Carnival barker and Republican Mitt Romney surrogate Donald Trump, R-Absurdity, set the gossip mill churning this week when he declared he would make a “major announcement” about President Barack Obama. “It’s very big — bigger than anybody would know,” he told Fox News Channel.
Would it be a bombshell revelation that Obama sold cocaine in college? The discovery of divorce papers for the president and the first lady?
A betting house set 250/1 odds that Trump would prove that Obama is from another planet, and 500/1 odds that he would announce that he is Obama’s father. The disclosure that Obama is not American was a relatively safe bet, at 2/5 odds.
But Trump surprised them all by announcing … absolutely nothing. Instead, he released at high noon on Wednesday what had the look of a ransom video, in which the Donald himself, appearing puffy and unwell, played a character that was part Dr. Evil, part Crazy Eddie.
“I have a deal for the president, a deal that I don’t believe he can refuse,” Trump announced, leaning forward and chopping the air with his hands. “If Barack Obama opens up and gives his college records and applications, and if he gives his passport applications and records, I will give to a charity of his choice … a check, immediately, for $5 million! The check will be given within one hour after he releases all of the records so stated.”
And if you act now, Mr. President, Trump will include an extra added free complimentary bonus gift at no cost to you!
In a singsong voice, Trump teased the president with possible charities that might interest him — “inner-city children in Chicago, American Cancer Society” — and repeated his terms: “All he has to do to get 5 million dollars. … ”
This was trumped up even by the Donald’s self-aggrandizing standards. Denunciations and derision rang out from the political left, right and center. The bookie who took wagers on Trump’s bombshell refunded the money. The real estate mogul had managed to make his real announcement resemble the Onion’s spoof article: “Donald Trump announced that he is a very sad man who has nothing to live for other than drawing attention to himself.”
One beneficiary of Trump’s bust was the publicity-seeking lawyer Gloria Allred, if only because it made her own October Surprise seem somewhat more newsworthy by comparison. She went to court Wednesday with the ex-wife of one of Romney’s former business associates as part of an effort to unseal testimony Romney gave in a 20-year-old divorce case.
Allred’s client is alleging, according to the celebrity gossip website TMZ, that Romney lied when he testified during her divorce from Staples founder Tom Stemberg. Romney, whose Bain Capital backed Staples, allegedly testified that the office supply chain was worth little, so the ex-wife lost out.
Even if true, the Allred surprise seems little more likely to shake up the presidential race than Trump’s histrionics.
The only true October Surprises this year have been executed by candidates themselves — and they aren’t what you’d call happy surprises. The latest belongs to Richard Mourdock, a Republican candidate for Senate in Indiana, who on Tuesday said abortion should be forbidden in all cases because “I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”
Romney’s campaign distanced itself from Mourdock’s sentiment, and Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., canceled an appearance with him. Mourdock, a tea party candidate who already was in jeopardy of losing what had been a safely Republican seat, attempted to clarify his views Wednesday, saying he opposes “any kind of sexual violence.”
Mourdock’s remarks put him in the undesirable category of Todd Akin, the Republican Senate nominee in Missouri who squandered an easy win when he asserted in August that “legitimate rape” rarely causes pregnancy. But Akin had already unveiled an October Surprise of his own: comparing his opponent, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, to a canine.
“It’s a little bit like one of those dogs, you know ‘fetch,’ and she goes to Washington, D.C., and gets all of these taxes and red tape and bureaucracy,” Akin said on Saturday.
Akin’s campaign spokesman, Rick Tyler, later tweeted that McCaskill’s breed would be a bull Shih Tzu — but he spelled it differently.
Surprising, but wrong. We already have had a dog of that variety this campaign season, and his name is Donald Trump.
Dana Milbank is a columnist for The Washington Post. His email address is danamilbank@washpost.com
It was hilarious and disturbing…..
“Jack Pumpkinhead”
Why didn’t he mention the real October surprise? You know, the emails and all the other proof that Obama has lied for weeks to the American public about what happened to our ambassador in Libya and what the administration did and did not do at the time.
Milbank is a hard leftie and wouldn’t dare write anything that would hurt his idol, Barack. Besides, all of the mainstream media have been ordered to ignore the Libya story until after the election.
As far as Trump’s challenge, it will go unmet and unmentioned. Obama doesn’t want anyone to find out the information in the college papers, whether it’s where he may have applied as a foreign student, or where he may have received low grades. Oh, and then there’s the subject of his thesis. What’s a real shame is that Obama is cheating the charity of his choice out of 5 million free dollars.
Hmm. It seems to me that Romney received a similar monetary challenge about 8 weeks ago. One million dollars CASH for “tax returns and/or details of his offshore assets, bank accounts and business partnerships.” This offer was from Larry Flynt, whom I hold in similar regard to The Donald. It seems to me that Romney doesn’t want anyone to find out the information in the returns dating back several years. What the real shame is that Romney is cheating a worthy charitable organization out of this money, should he not choose to just keep it instead (cash after all…).
And furthermore, who keeps their college application from 30+ years ago? Do the colleges even keep that stuff in paper form, or at all? I’m quite sure a mimeographed copy, if it exists, would not be acceptable to The Donald.
Since he graduated Magna cum Laude, it’s rather doubtful that he received low grades.
More paranoia and trivia.
Because decades old college records will tell us how he will govern a second term better than looking at what he’s done in office during the first term.
That “proof” is going up in smoke.
http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/24/doubts-surface-over-e-mail-on-claim-of-responsibility-for-benghazi-attack/
It’s cute the way you wingnuts pretend to give a rat’s *** about something when it give you the opportunity to bash Obama.
Before Obama: “Drone strikes? Good! I say kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out!”
During Obama’s Presidency: “Drone strikes! Atrocious! Obama’s a murderer and a war criminal!”
That’s just the most blatant example, but there are numerous others: the deficit, raising the debt ceiling, authoritarianism and civil liberties, government corruption, unnecessary wars, racism, women’s well-being and equal pay, misuse of executive privilege, cronyism, misdeeds in the Oval Office, ect, etc, etc.
Barely a peep from the lot of you during all eight years of Bush’s disastrous authoritarianism, but as soon as the black Democrat with a foreign-sounding name gets in the Oval Office, suddenly every rightwinger is now a radical anti-government libertarian.
No comment on the subject of my post I notice.
But the usual lefty trick of trying to change the subject.
Check out my previous comment. No, I’m not flattering you with a response.
because truth doesn’t get through the fever swamp you live in.
No, my comment is entirely relevant: you’re pretending to care about the deaths in Benghazi, but you’re only doing it because it’s an opportunity to bash Obama.
Pat Tillman’s friendly-fire death resulted in an actual cover-up by the Bush Administration, but somehow I doubt you expressed a fraction as much outrage over that lie as you have about this non-lie you falsely accuse Obama of committing. That’s why my comment was relevant.
The Pat Tillman cover up was exposed and the high level military that did it were discredited and their careers destroyed. There was no evidence that the cover up involved the highest levels of government including the president, his staff, the secretary of state and our ambassador to the UN.
It is obvious that the Benghazi cover up does involve people at the very highest levels of government including the president him self.
The only thing these two events have in common is that both cover ups were for political reasons. The Pat Tillman case was a case of friendly fire, mistaken identity, a horrible mistake. It does not rise to the level of negligence and incompetence of the Benghazi incident.
You trust all e-mails? Wise move to sort it out first before foot in mouth disease (a current Augusta trait)
If there was a law against hubris, Donald Trump would get life in the electric chair. His slum lord daddy gave him $50 million back in the 60’s. If he had 1% of the business acumen that he claims, he should be able to buy and sell Bill Gates and Warren Buffet by now. Romney would be wise to distance himself from that clown.
The Donald is proof that money does not buy class. He is just pathetic and a publicity seeker willing to say anything, no matter how ridiculous, to get attention. Trump, your 15 minutes are just about up.
Long gone. He doesn’t even have Injury Time left.
I love good puns! High five!
IF Romney wins do the Democrats get to take an oath and commit themselves to the new presidents failure? Filibustering every bill even if a Demopcrat sponsored it… even if it was a Democratic idea? Even at the expense of every citizen?
Seems fair to me!