President Donald Trump dropped two hints this week that a major “surprise” would materialize ahead of the midterms next month, hints that former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance argued Friday could not be clearer.
“Trump seems to be preparing to try and salvage a potential electoral loss in ways that are all too familiar for those of us who lived through January 6,” Vance wrote in an analysis published Friday on her Substack. “We understand the concept. And like always, Trump says the quiet part out loud.”
Trump’s first tease came Tuesday morning, when he took to his social media platform Truth Social to tell his millions of followers to “watch out for the ‘Midterm Surprise,’” without providing further details. Later that same day, Trump again teased about an impending surprise during a speech in Baltimore alongside White House budget chief Russ Vought.
“We have some big surprises coming up in another few weeks, right, Russ?” Trump said. “[Vought is] gonna be one of the very important people in the history of our country. He’s got some great things happening.”
While Trump never expanded on what the impending “surprises" were, Vance argued, based on the Trump administration’s past rhetoric and actions, that the "surprises" undoubtedly involved potential plans to bolster Republicans in the midterms. She also argued that Trump’s hints “should be a wake-up call for anyone who is still asleep.”
Vance flagged several troubling signs that she argued supported her theory. She pointed to the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division lowering its hiring standards, the detention of more than 100 American citizens falsely accused by Immigration and Customs Enforcement of being noncitizens, and Trump’s increasingly fierce attacks on the press.
“The president is out of control as the election looms,” Vance wrote. “He will try to interfere with the votes we cast. He will try to discredit the press. He does not care if American citizens get harmed in the process. It is all one story. It’s the story we must pay attention to.”