This article is a political satire.
Why does America celebrate Halloween? Because we love to scare one another, and we celebrate monsters who terrify us out of our wits.
If you haven’t decided who you should be dressed as on Halloween night, how about getting some inspiration from popular figures on the political scene? In this business, frightening figures are in no short supply.
Sorry, you’re not gonna find Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton on this list. They’ve already made it to the Hall of Fame.
Here are the eight most feared political figures of 2018. In the interest of fairness, we picked four liberals and four conservatives for this spooky list, which is in no particular order.
- Kamala Harris
Have you watched the junior senator from California grill Administration officials with razor-sharp questions during hearings on Capitol Hill?
The mere tone of her voice will make you pee in your pants.
As you’re trying to answer her question, she repeatedly interrupts you with more questions until you lose your sanity.
With a pen in between her fingers, this former San Francisco DA makes thrusting gestures directed at the person on the hot seat as she makes her point. It’s like you’re getting stabbed repeatedly with that pen.
Scare Level: 8
- Peter Strzok
Peter Strzok is the former FBI counterintelligence agent who led the bureau’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and the inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. He was fired as lead agent in the special counsel’s Russia investigation when Robert Mueller III found out that Strzok had been exchanging anti-Trump messages with an FBI lawyer.
Two powerful House committees subpoenaed Strzok in July to testify publicly at a joint hearing. He defended himself against accusations that he let his personal political views affect his official actions.
The hearing proved to be highly contentious as it was marred by shouting matches and personal attacks between Republican representatives on one side, and Strzok and the Democratic representatives on the other.
With fire in his eyes, Strzok vociferously defended himself. This created spine-chilling optics that inspired memes that went viral in social media at the time. He was Hannibal Lecter – scary.
Scare Level: 9
- The Senate Elevator Activists
A day after the explosive testimonies of Catherine Blasey Ford and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona), a swing vote in the Senate, has announced he would vote “yes” on Kavanaugh’s nomination.
He was on his way to the committee hearing where members were to vote on advancing Kavanaugh’s nomination when two female activists cornered him at an elevator and stridently castigated him for expressing his support for the nominee. The confrontation was beamed live by CNN.
The committee voted to send Kavanaugh’s confirmation to a full senate vote, but Flake surprised everyone when he stated during the hearing that he would not vote to confirm Kavanaugh if an FBI investigation into the allegations against the nominee is not made.
This further delayed the Senate’s confirmation of Kavanaugh by one week. Many believed that Flake’s encounter with the two activists prompted him to call for the FBI investigation.
It is not known whether Flake ever took that elevator again.
Scare Level: 8
- Michael Avenatti
Feared by the devil himself, Michael Avenatti, attorney for adult film actress Stormy Daniels, has given Donald Trump nightmares.
The brash, hard-charging Avenatti, who is representing Daniels in a lawsuit that seeks to invalidate a pre-election non-disclosure agreement with Trump, has appeared countless times on every major talk show on network and cable TV. Now there is not a single household in America that is not aware that Trump had an affair with Daniels before he was president. Trump is running for reelection in 2020.
Scare Level: 9
- John Bolton
He is so badass that there is an adjective almost exclusively used to describe him—hawkish, which refers to someone advocating an aggressive or warlike policy.
This Bolton guy was the same dude with massive mustache who pushed hard for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He was under secretary of state and then UN ambassador in the Bush administration.
When President Trump appointed him as National Security Adviser in April, rogue states, such as Iran and North Korea were horror-stricken. Through the years, Bolton had advocated preemptive strikes on both Iran and North Korea.
In a recent speech, he gave this stern warning to Iran: “If you cross us, our allies, or our partners; if you harm our citizens; if you continue to lie, cheat, and deceive, yes, there will indeed be hell to pay.”
Scare Level: 9
- The Anonymous NYT Op-Ed Writer
This is a veritable ghost. This supposed senior White House official gave the entire executive branch the creeps when he anonymously wrote an Op-Ed piece about President Donald Trump that was published by the New York Times in September. This official, whose real identity is known only to the Times, made claims that the president is a kind of leader that is “impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective”.
This faceless Trump critic further claimed that “there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment” but they feared that this action would put the country in a constitutional crisis.
Scare Level: 8
- Sarah Huckabee Sanders
The current White House Press Secretary, who replaced Sean Spicer in July of last year, personify grace under fire.
Week after week, the Trump administration has to defend against scathing criticisms from the news media, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders is widely regarded as effective at what she does.
Sanders is hard-hitting even as she deals with the news media professionally and politely. The New Yorker dubbed Sanders as “Trump’s battering ram”.
She dismissed “Fear”, Bob Woodward’s damning book on Trump, as a work of fiction.
She denounced the New York Times Op-Ed writer as “pathetic” and “coward”.
When the mainstream media criticized the President’s use of the word “animals” to describe MS-13 gang members, Sanders said: “Frankly, I think the term animal doesn’t go far enough.”
Scare Level: 8
- Lindsey Graham
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) has occupied his current position in government since 2003, but his baddest moment in the Senate came just recently. During the Judiciary Committee hearing that investigated whether Brett M. Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court Associate Justice nominee, sexually assaulted Catherine Blasey Ford when they were in high school.
In the two weeks leading up to Kavanaugh’s and Ford’s testimonies, the nominee was subjected to relentless accusations of sexual misconduct when he was in high school and college. Some people say that Kavanaugh, who has undergone FBI background check six times, was a victim of character assassination. This is what Senator Graham believed too, and he was furious.
During Kavanaugh’s testimony, Graham unleashed hell on the Democratic members of the committee, declaring: “What you want to do is destroy this guy’s life, hold this seat open, and hope you win in 2020.”
“If you really wanted to know the truth, you sure as hell wouldn’t have done what you did to this guy,” Graham continued on his tirade. “Boy, you guys want power. God, I hope you never get it. I hope the American people can see through this sham!”
Scare Level: 9
Good luck, kids (at heart)! Go get those candies!
