The No-Surprise October Surprises in the 2024 Presidential Election

Last week, a self-described “Dem strategist” posted on X: “I have been told that Trump groped a minor at one of his donor dinners — and that there’s video.” The next day, Stacey Williams, a woman who briefly dated Jeffrey Epstein, went on CNN and accused former president Donald Trump of groping her at Trump Tower in front of Epstein in 1993. (CNN talked to three people with whom Williams discussed the alleged assault, and NBC News spoke with seven.) Also that day, the Daily Mail published an anonymous account of a woman who said second gentleman Doug Emhoff “slapped” her in 2012, backing up an earlier report of the allegations that were told secondhand. In a statement, the Trump campaign denied the allegation regarding Epstein, calling it a “fake story [that] was contrived by the Harris campaign” but did not respond to the social media swirl around the strategist’s message, perhaps because there was no accuser and no clear allegation. And while the Harris campaign had initially denied the story about Emhoff’s ex, telling Semafor, “any suggestion that he would or has ever hit a woman is false,” they declined to discuss the new firsthand allegations.

It’s the end of October during a presidential election, and both camps are lobbing should-be surprises at each other. Unlike the obvious grenades of previous cycles, such as the gut-dropping footage of Trump describing what he believes to be his right to “grab them by the pu–y” and the subsequent recoiling of the Republican Party, these new allegations seem to be less surprising because of the context in which they exist.

Women alleging unwanted sexual contact from Trump is so depressingly common that the public seems inured to new information, like finding out yet another ice sheet is melting during yet another once-in-a-100-years hurricane season. Trump’s accusers range from his deceased ex-wife, Ivana, who during a 1991 deposition accused Trump of rape (which she recanted) and who is now interred at one of his golf courses, to E. Jean Carroll, who was awarded $83.3 million in two sexual abuse and defamation cases, after a jury found in her favor and a judge ruled that her claim Trump had “raped” her was “substantially true.”

Williams, a retired model, alleges that Trump and Epstein smiled at each other while Trump’s “hands started moving, and they were on the side of my breasts, on my hips, back down to my butt.” (Epstein died by suicide in jail, while awaiting trial for charges of sex trafficking minors.) Williams’s account has similar elements to those from the previous 26 women who accused Trump of sexual impropriety: abrupt incursions into intimate physical spaces he apparently feels entitled to enter. (Trump has denied all the accusations.) It’s impossible to ignore the misogynistic, dehumanizing language Trump uses when he describes women: horseface, monster, dog, disgusting. (The campaign has had slightly more restraint than its surrogates regarding one vulgar term. Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC published then deleted a post referring to Kamala Harris as a C-word. Before Trump’s Sunday rally at Madison Square Garden, a staffer reportedly excised a joke in which comedian Tony Hinchcliffe was going to call Harris a “c-nt,” though not one in which Hinchcliffe referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”)

The new rumors about Trump “groping a minor” have not been substantiated. Keith Edwards, the person who posted about the alleged video, did not respond to Vanity Fair’s request for comment, leaving many questions unanswered. How old was the alleged minor? What donor was hosting the event where the groping supposedly took place? During which election cycle did it happen? Who took the video and why haven’t they shared it publicly? How does Edwards know about it? As the Trump campaign pointed out, Edwards received a one-time $1,000 payment for social media work from the Democratic campaign in April of this year, according to an FEC filing. (The Harris campaign declined to comment.)

Similar allegations have been leveled at Trump in the past. Five Miss Teen USA contestants told Buzzfeed that Trump walked into a dressing room while teenagers were changing, and a Miss USA contestant told The New York Times he kissed her on the lips without consent when she was 21. But there’s also the so-called “pee tape”—an alleged incident in the Steele dossier in which Russian intelligence agents supposedly took footage of Trump watching sex workers urinate on each other at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton. The tape never materialized.

The original allegations about Emhoff came out on October 2 in the Daily Mail. They have made little impact in mainstream media—perhaps because they were initially secondhand, or maybe because he isn’t the candidate. The woman says she slapped Emhoff back after he struck her in front of a crowded taxi line outside of an amfAR event, which no witness has come forward to verify. Three of the woman’s friends corroborated her account to the Daily Mail, including one who says she told him immediately afterward.

Regardless of whether her story is accurate—and that matters very much—the barrage of assault allegations is a dreary, panic-inducing reminder of what’s at stake for women. There’s a woman at the center of this election, who may be the first-ever Madam President. There are the many millions of women who may be further exposed to Trump’s degradation, both personally and through the erosion of civil and reproductive rights. This weekend at a rally in Kalamazoo, Michigan, Michelle Obama prevailed upon men to “take our lives seriously.” The former first lady asked, “So are you as men prepared to look into the eyes of the women and children you love and tell them you supported this assault on our safety?”

As Harris is impacted by October surprises in which no one is alleging any misconduct against her, the double standard between the candidates is shocking: a twice-impeached, 78-year-old, Hitler-curiousdoting convicted felon is running against a Black woman of Asian descent who doesn’t seem to have anything more scandalous in her past than a brief foray into anti-fracking sentiment. “I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m a little frustrated,” Obama said, “that some of us are choosing to ignore Donald Trump’s gross incompetence while asking Kamala to dazzle us at every turn.”

Earlier this month, Harris told Call Her Daddy host Alex Cooper why she became a prosecutor and lifelong civil servant.

After she found out her childhood best friend was being assaulted by her stepfather, Harris says she decided, “I wanted to do the work of protecting vulnerable people.” (This week in Green Bay, WI, Trump offered some ominously non-consensual support, telling a crowd, “whether the women like it or not, I’m going to protect them.”) Cooper told Harris she gets many messages from people in situations similar to Harris’s friend asking what they should do. “The first thing that I would say to anyone going through it is tell someone that you trust,” Harris says. “Don’t quietly suffer.” That is ostensibly what the women on the other side of the allegations against Trump and Emhoff have done, despite the disparity in type, scale, credibility, potential motivation, and impact. And to be clear, there is no equivalency between a potential future president with decades of incriminating (and criminal) behavior and what appears to be an isolated accusation against the spouse of a candidate.

“There are people that want you to be safe and will want to protect you,” Harris says. “Know that you have a right to live in a place where you feel safe and are actually safe.” The best November surprise would be if that actually turns out to be true.