One of the best-known ploys before an election is known as the October Surprise. Every candidate hopes that some event will occur that will help them get elected, or distract the voters from their shortcomings. This is a real concept and they even made a movie about the attempt of a president to cover up his sex scandal.
Many moviegoers will remember the Robert De Niro movie “Wag the Dog.” In that film a president is in serious trouble for his involvement in a sex caper. He desperately needs to divert the public’s attention and enlists a spin-doctor to create a distraction. They then fabricate a phony war in Albania to get the public to stop focusing on the President’s numerous shortcomings.
President Trump has many headaches on his plate. The murder of a journalist who is a U.S. resident in Saudi Arabia, tariffs that are roiling the stock market, his plummeting poll numbers with women and the ongoing Mueller investigation have been giving him migraines for weeks.
Somehow, some way, the President needed a distraction and he invented one. It’s the so-called caravan of people from Central America who have been crossing parts of Mexico in the hope of gaining asylum in the United States.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines caravan as a “company of travelers on a journey through desert or hostile regions.” Other books define them as “pilgrims.” In fact, they are a group of poor people seeking to escape violence and corruption in countries such as Honduras. Their only goal is to find a safe home, and America is everybody’s dream destination.
Faced with countless issues, President Trump decided that the refugees are a threat to the security of all Americans and labels them the “tool of the Democrats.” Because it sounds good, he says the election should be decided by Kavanagh and the “caravan.”
To promote his pre-election fraud he enlists Fox’s Sean Hannity, who immediately labels these poor souls as members of the MS-13 gang. When questioned about the desperate people, he refers to them as the “mob” who seeks to infiltrate into America and attack all of our hard working citizens.
I am no fan of Geraldo Rivera but even Rivera couldn’t stomach the ugliness of Trump’s latest pre-election ploy. He asked Hannity if the group should be “shot at the border” and Hannity backed off.
Rivera went on to criticize the President for taking away aid from Honduras as a “cruel” step which will only drive more people out of the country. Hannity won the support of a character named Sebastian Gorka, who was kicked off the White House staff for his incendiary writings and fearmongering. Gorka, himself an immigrant, stated that he too believed that the travelers were all “MS-13 members.”
There is no doubt that the closing days of this year’s election have been marked by fabrication after fabrication. The President recently announced to one of his adoring crowds that there will be a massive middle income tax cut in a few weeks. This came as a surprise to every one of the 435 House and 100 Senate members who have no idea what Trump is talking about.
Rattled by polls that show that the Republicans may lose control of the House, Trump is seeking any shiny object that will save him from being blamed for a change of control. Those large groups of women who protested at the Supreme Court during the Kavanagh hearings, are now referred to as a “mob.” Democrats who contradict the president are all given labels that demean them. Somehow, with each passing week, the step from the sidewalk to the gutter gets shorter and shorter for this president.
There is no doubt that the caravan seekers will be used as Donald Trump’s only trump card to frighten voters to reject the Democrats. If the Nov. 6 elections leave the Republicans in control of both houses, even fastening your seat belt will not save you from the next two frightening years ahead.
