0:06Hi, this is Clive Priddle and you're watching The Current.
0:07Today, we're joined by Devlin Barrett. Devlin, hi.
0:12Hi.
0:13Uh, and we're delighted to have you because here we are, it's the back end of September, and we're we're feeling the political sap rising ahead of the election around the corner now, it's uh, it's starting to get feisty, the first debate is around the corner.
0:29And your book, um, brilliantly, timely publishing is called October Surprise and is the story of 2016.
0:37But before we get to the specifics of your book, um, let me just ask you in general about the whole idea of an October Surprise.
0:46Uh, where did that come from?
0:47Is there is there an original October surprise?
0:49There actually is, I mean, it's always sort of existed in some level in politics,
0:50but there there is a person and an event that coined the term October Surprise, it actually dates back to the 1980 US presidential campaign between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.
1:04And it it was a weird way to deploy it at the time because it was essentially one theory of an October Surprise on on the part of one campaign, it was raised, it was an accusation that was just sort of leveled, and it quickly spawned a sort of counter theory of of a different October Surprise by the opposing candidate.
1:42And and frankly, there's never really been much substance, not much evidence to really prove either of those theories correct, it may be that the year that started the term October Surprise, in fact, had no October Surprise.
2:16Um, but it it became a very popular topic for a very specific thing that can happen late in campaigns.
2:29And it's the kind of thing that campaign consultants sweat and worry about and and and stress about right up to the very end because it's so uncontrollable, it's so unpredictable when it happens to a campaign. Um, and it's the kind of thing reporters often dread because one of the one of the types of October Surprise that can be inflicted in into an election is one where an accusation is leveled and there's simply not enough time to process it, to understand it, to essentially check it out, run it to ground and know how important whether it's important or not.
3:38Okay, so this is October Surprises.
3:40So that sets up um, the so October Surprise has mythical origins in the 1980s, uh, and is much talked about as a as a potential.
4:20It's the it's the looming ghost that that actually rarely in fact shows up in an election cycle, but as your book shows, in 2016, it really arrived, uh, we had the full spectre.
4:59And um,
5:00I want you
5:00first just to explain
5:01how you're sure that what happened in 2016,
5:04which is James Comey's intervention in the election,
5:10how we can know for certain that that really changed events?
5:16The best evidence of it is is simply in the data.
5:20The polling data shows that before Comey's letter, uh, reopening an investigation into Hillary Clinton,
5:30Comey released that letter on October 28th and before that letter,
5:35Hillary Clinton generally had about a six point lead in the polls.
5:42And what happened was you saw that lead, uh, basically lose about three points in the immediate aftermath of that letter.
5:51And most importantly, she lost significant points in the swing states, in a lot of the key states that, uh, were so critical to winning winning it all.
6:01And while the Comey, uh, letter had an effect of about three percentage points, in three key states, Trump won by much less than 1% of the vote.
6:22So, you could never prove definitively that Comey made Donald Trump the president.
6:35But you can say that there is a very good basis to argue that the data shows that Comey's letter had the biggest impact at the crucial time to make that to lead to that end result.
6:49And the Clinton campaign never had time to recover from it.
6:53They never they never were able to recover from it, that's that's very true.
7:01And one of the quirks of the of why they were never able to recover is because the Clinton campaign came to believe, by the time you get to late October.
7:15Remember they have been dealing with the Clinton email investigation and and sort of the the cloud of that for so, so long in that campaign.
7:25Their day their polling data suggests that the more the conversation was about her emails, forget the topic, forget the specifics.
7:41If we're talking about the emails, the Clinton came couldn't campaign came to believe that she was that she was losing ground.
7:53Because the more people heard about emails, the less they liked her.
8:03And there's again, there's there's fairly good polling data to back that up.
8:08So, so it was the nightmare of all nightmares to have the subject that they didn't want talked about,
8:12brought back into public consciousness by the the chief of the FBI in front of television cameras nationwide.
8:22Exactly.
8:23And it the Comey letter goes out 11 days before the election.
8:36And one of the classic definitions of an October Surprise is it happens when there's so little time that a campaign can't really recover from it, can't really counter whatever the accusation or information is.
8:57And in that sense, Comey's letter was kind of quintessentially an October Surprise because there was less than two weeks left.
9:02And people were already voting.
9:03The 2016 set of circumstances is really particular, isn't it?
9:18I mean, the October Surprise in 2016 is it's firstly it's supremely well targeted, um, you know, this isn't just an attack on a Clinton surrogate or somebody who even a vice president.
9:51It's right it nails the candidate in an area where she is perceived to be vulnerable.
9:57Even if that turns out to be an error.
10:01Um, and so it's quite unlike anything that we're experiencing in 2020 so far, uh, so we we're talking in the wake of the sad passing of Justice Ginsberg.
10:17Um, and some people might say, well, is that an October surprise, but it isn't really, is it, because we don't know how that plays politically.
10:25No, and and it's funny you mention that because just in the last few weeks, a couple people have said to me because they know about the book.
10:34Well, is this an October Surprise, is this an October Surprise?
10:38And what I keep saying is, well, first of all, it's September, so I think the immediate answer is no.
10:43But more importantly,
10:44we're still far enough away from the election that the kind of undigestible impact isn't really possible and if you remember a good example of that is that is if you look think back to early October 2016.
11:08There are some very surprising things that happened, but they happened in early October and they end up not being as important ultimately in the long run.
11:27And I'm referring to the Access Hollywood tape that came out of President Trump making, uh, offensive statements, uh, about how he treats women.
11:51And the government statement saying that Russia was hacking the election.
12:00Now, both of those things were incredible surprises that happened in October, but they ultimately did not move the needle the same way that Comey's letter did
12:12in large part because it happened right at the end of October.
12:18So we will have to wait for the better part of another month to know for sure if we're really going to see an October Surprise that would turn the 2020 election in the way that the one in 2016 did.
12:28Well, and one of the things that's kind of funny about that is I think whether we consciously know it or not, I think the experience of 2016 has really weighed on a lot of voters.
12:37And so I certainly in my conversations feel like a lot more voters are attuned to the idea of an October Surprise this time around than they were that time.
13:08You know, if you think back to way October 2016 was shaking shaking up.
13:13You know, a lot of people really firmly believed that Hillary Clinton was a lock to win that election.
13:22And judging by his own statements, James Comey believed she was a lock to win that election.
13:28This time, I think, in large part because of 2016, I think the public is much more attuned to the notion of like, is someone going to try and trick us at the end?
13:38Is there going to be some weird development that makes us all like suddenly change our minds about something?
13:46So, I think interestingly, I think there is actually more awareness of the idea, and in a in a strange way, that might actually diminish the effect of any October Surprise that happens because I think now there's actually there's actually more people looking for it.
14:01So do you think, um, do you think the political teams, the campaign teams for the Democrats and the Republicans have spent four years trying to come up with an October Surprise?
14:07You know, trying to build their own little sort of weapon of destruction that they can release at the end of the campaign to do precisely this.
14:17Well, sort of, because if you think about what it is,
14:20it's usually some type of accusation or or a revelation about something that happened.
14:24And and no one remembers this anymore because it ended up I think not having a huge effect, but back in the 2000 presidential US presidential election, for example.
14:41Just days before the election, someone came forward to reveal that George W Bush had an old uh DUI arrest.
14:54Uh an old drunk driving arrest, and at the time, that was obviously a very big deal and people took it very seriously and thought that was, you know, to some in some to some degree dirty pool in the process because you're announcing this thing very late.
15:07Um, but it isn't necessarily going to have the same effect just because people don't care as much.
15:18Um, so when we talk about an October Surprise this year, a lot of it depends on, well, what is it and where does it come from?
15:30Because those are the two things that sort of can create an impact.
15:32So if it feels like it comes from within a campaign, people are going to dismiss it as politicking.
15:38And that's what makes 2016 so incredible is that um the the October Surprise is delivered by a man and indeed an organization that presents itself as being absolutely impartial, absolutely apolitical.
15:56And indeed, uh a servant of the entire country, you know, the FBI.
16:02So, how on God's green earth did the FBI get itself in a situation that it would even even tiptoe towards tilting an election like this?
16:14It seems like every instinct should have told them not to do it.
16:19So what the hell did six foot seven James Comey think he was doing?
16:23Striding across that piece of lawn.
16:26Believe it or not, he thought he was protecting himself and the FBI.
16:33I mean that that seems very counter-intuitive because it is very counter-intuitive.
16:40He thought that if it came out after the election that the FBI had known about these this new tranche of emails that were found on former Congressman Anthony Weiner's laptop.
16:54If it came out after the election that the FBI had known that and not said anything publicly,
17:02that Republicans would accuse the FBI of having delivered, uh, the White House to Hillary Clinton.
17:10That they helped her win.
17:11And they were very afraid of that scenario and they frankly did not really contemplate, by their own admission.
17:19They never really contemplated a scenario in which Trump might win and and what that might say about them and what and their decisions.
17:28So, he thought he was protecting these institutions, particularly the FBI and the Justice Department.
17:33Um, but that shows I think in I think it's I think it's safe to say that he had too much
