Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics

and the Trump presidency for the New Spectator USA website.

I'm joined today by Kurt Mills, who is Foreign Affairs Reporter at the National Interest,

and we're going to be talking about the disturbing news of

bomb threats in America today. Kurt, people are in, well, shock is maybe a little bit excessive,

but people are a little bit disturbed by these bomb threats that have come suspicious devices.

We don't know anything about the bombs,

but it's obviously not nice, and they appear to have been targeted at liberals and progressives.

This inevitably has caused a kind of political war on social media already, and people are already

speculating this might be an October surprise that could really sway the election or swing the election,

the midterm election towards the Democrat.

I don't want to be sort of crude and talk immediately about politics.

Obviously, it's very good that no one has hurt and has died so far.

But in those people are going to talk about politics immediately,

so we may as well plunge in.

Do you think it's an October surprise politically?

So a few observations.

One, I would say, having lived my whole life in this country, which it strikes me that

we are firmly in a post-post-9-11 world, because if this had occurred in 2008 or 2004 on

the heels of the anthrax mailings and the DC sniper and of course

of September 11 attacks, the idea that there would be such a partisan division on how something

like bomb threats against two ex-presidents and, you know, an ex-democratic nominee, Secretary

...