Unlike Joe Biden, the former president benefits from international turmoil.
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been imprisoned in Russia since March 29, 2023, when he was arrested and charged with espionage. It’s widely believed that Vladimir Putin’s government is holding Gershkovich as potential barter for a prisoner exchange with the United States government, although no deal has yet been made. On Thursday, Donald Trump weighed in with his usual spiel arguing that he alone, the great dealmaker, could free Gershkovich. On his platform at Truth Social, Trump claimed:
Evan Gershkovich, the Reporter from The Wall Street Journal, who is being held by Russia, will be released almost immediately after the Election, but definitely before I assume Office. He will be HOME, SAFE, AND WITH HIS FAMILY. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, will do that for me, but not for anyone else, and WE WILL BE PAYING NOTHING!
Boastful posts are familiar fare from Trump, and in keeping with his campaign message that, in contrast with the supposedly hapless and weak Joe Biden, he is a tough guy who is respected by foreign strongmen. But Trump’s braggadocio raises a natural question: Why doesn’t he get his Russian pal to release Gershkovitch now? Responding to Trump, former Barack Obama adviser Tommy Vietor raised this commonsense objection: “How about using your leverage with Putin to get Gershkovich out immediately or else this sounds like Trump and Putin are jointly holding him hostage.” In promising a release of Gershovich only after the election, Trump comes off as cruel rather than strong.
If read carefully, Trump’s statement isn’t even a promise of working to get Gershkovich released but rather a signal to Putin to not negotiate with the Biden White House and hold on to the journalist until Trump is elected. In other words, this is a classic Trump attempt to align with Putin against the Democrats. It’s another iteration of Trump’s infamous 2016 statement:
“Russia, if you’re listening—I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let’s see if that happens.”
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In sabotaging an ongoing negotiation between an American president and a foreign adversary, Trump might be accused of breaking norms—or something more serious. Alas, he is merely following a pattern already pioneered by Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.
There has long been speculation that in 1980 Reagan’s campaign created a backchannel with the Iranian regime, requesting that it hold on to the 53 Americans it held hostage and thus hurt the reelection prospects of then-President Jimmy Carter. The October Surprise theory held that the Iranians, who released the hostages only minutes after Reagan was sworn in as president, accepted this request in exchange for unknown favors. It was called the October Surprise because the Reagan campaign was trying to wreck what it saw as the unwanted prospect of a Carter diplomatic triumph before the election.
We now know that the October Surprise theory is almost certainly true, because, as The New York Times reported in March 2023, the Reagan campaign was sending surrogates to the Middle East to give feelers to the Iranians. The New York Times account is only the latest of a long series of reports pointing to the reality of a Reagan campaign backchannel with Iran.
The chief difference between Reagan in 1980 and Trump in 2024 is that Reagan lived in a period when shame still existed, so he acted furtively. Back in that distant era, it was widely understood that the United Sta
