This is the month of many traditional experiences on which our culture can depend. Culminating with Halloween, there is also the start of sports schedules, new Fall TV programming kicks off, it is the time of horror films, and also pumpkin spice season! 

Adding to this busy schedule, every four years, there is also the predictable attempt by the political parties to release supposedly damning information about their opponents ahead of the November voting fury. The “October Surprise” — like a cicada swarm — is such a dependable arrival that a cottage industry develops to see who can spot the shenanigans first. Recently, we had Jack Smith contorting the law yet again in a renewed effort to impugn Trump, and now we have the Washington Post pathetically turning to an already dispatched source of intrigue – Christopher Steele.

Yes, they have become just that desperate.

The man behind the infamously leaked and hilariously dismissed dossier carrying his surname has risen anew, and WaPo is here to tout him like a summer blockbuster opening in theaters. Steele has a new book released today, and the news outlet is doing more than pimping its release or reviewing it as a work. They sent their features writer from the Style section, Manuel Roig-Franzia, to London, along with a cameraman, in order to profile Steele and tout his new release.

“Unredacted: Russia, Trump, and the Fight for Democracy” is said to offer up fresh scandal surrounding Trump, the man that WaPo declares “Steele’s nemesis,” despite the fact that the man was clearly the antagonist towards the presidential candidate. What is perplexing is why anyone would think Steele to be a valid source for…well, frankly, anything. His original masterwork — while certainly grist for the media to spend years harping on a fake scandal — was so roundly disregarded that once the dismissive Mueller Report was finally released, the supposedly originating dossier was barely even mentioned.

Yet here is WaPo pimping this man and his new book of “secrets” as if he has credibility beyond that of a late-night fat-loss pills infomercial. The headline alone is an act of theatrical delusion: In saying he “Promises More Dirt,” the outlet pretends that he ever delivered dirt in the first place. "Christopher Steele unveils the fruits of fresh sleuthing,” goes their claim, but as we will learn, this fruit is about as “fresh” as a cut cantaloupe found in a parking lot on Wednesday after that weekend’s farmer’s market packed up. 

While the publisher hypes this in predictable hyperbolic prose ("A searing new report!"), the author reveals his exposé is hardly as hot as a Krispy Kreme glazed plucked from the oven.

The book, part score-settling memoir and part global threat analysis, at times reads like a Steele Dossier 2.0. He says he uncovered the new tidbits while working for unnamed wealthy individuals in the 2020 campaign cycle and other stuff he dug up while working for corporate clients after Trump was defeated in 2020 by Joe Biden.

Umm, sooo…this supposedly new oppo research is...four years old. And at no time was this searing information ever thought to be so gripping and trenchant that Steele would come forward with the details...until today. This is already shaping up to be about as substantial as his 1.0 beta version of his namesake dossier, and he undersells things even further.

The new material is unverified — it generally has to do with similar themes of Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin, nefariously contemplating schemes large and small to get Trump elected in 2020 and in the current campaign.

This is hardly a selling point. In fact, it is the polar opposite. Mueller had established that there was no link between Trump’s campaign and Putin, even as the investigator strained mightily to make any kind of tie possible and tossed out dozens of ineffectual indictments (mostly at Russian figures who would never see the light of a courtroom) all so the press could shriek about the supposed guilt the report had uncovered. Even later investigations of Russian meddling in the 2016 election turned up nothing, showing little to no influence was realized regarding the result.

But today, a reconstituted version of this discredited storyline is supposed to move the political needle?! This is pathetic wishcasting. In his tome, Steele describes Trump as about to deliver a “new world disorder” and declares that he is more dangerous to this country than China or Iran. Oh, and he will deliver upon us the end of democracy, naturally. 

Steele defends his frequently disparaged original dossier, particularly as it pertains to Trump, saying he still thinks that the “original intelligence was obtained from credible sources” and that the claims have not been disproved in court. 

This is a very selective language being used. Even if the sources were credible, that does not mean the intelligence itself was valid. As for his claim of no court disproving him, was his dossier — much like Mueller discarding it for his report — ever even allowed in a case? One could state that evidence declared to be inadmissible was never discredited in a courtroom. (Not to mention that the burden of proving an allegation lies with its proponent.)

Then Steele goes on to declare that reports such as his dossier usually are no better than 70 percent accurate. This speaks even less to its validity; the bulk of the accuracy can be about trivial details, while the headline-grabbing aspects — such as escorts micturating in hotel room romps — are the mendacious aspects. Yet we are supposed to believe Steele this time, and here comes this laugher of a line from Roig-Franzia.

In a sense, Steele has done an end run around all those persnickety journalists from major news organizations who insisted on such old-fashioned conventions as confirming information before publishing it back in 2016.

And there you have it. We have not only been given all the reasons to dismiss anything as being a new scandal for Trump, but also to avoid this book, and for that matter, the Washington Post. To claim journalists were confirming the details of Steele’s previous work before rushing to publish, when it has been fully discredited, means this October Surprise belongs right alongside Steele’s new book – in the Fiction section.