I had a friend in high school who really looked up to Donald Trump. This guy was all about Trump’s showy, cavalier attitude toward life, and aimed to mimic his grab-life-by-the-balls attitude every day by making us all laugh in the back of the bus and being an unmistakable presence in any room he was in. He’d read all Trump’s books, knew all about Trump’s life story, and thought Mr. Donald J. Trump was a god among men.

I’m four years out of high school. This same friend posts Facebook memes about a $15 minimum wage, voted for Bernie in the primaries, and scoffs at anyone who would even consider voting for the ostentatious businessman in this race. What’s changed?

It’s important to remember that everyone loved Donald Trump until he ran for president as a Republican. Trump’s show “The Apprentice” was high on the list of top 20 shows on network TV for two years, even rating above Monday Night Football in it's first season in 2004. His book The Art of the Deal has 4.4 out of 5 stars on Amazon ,and out of 1,688 reviews, 90 percent of them (no that’s not an estimate, I did the math) are 3 stars or above—in fact, 86 percent are 4 or 5 stars. Trump’s candid exaltation of his successful deals spent 51 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List (Remember—there are 52 weeks in a year). Trump’s business success is, as Ethan Epstein at the Weekly Standard put it, “more than marginal”. In short, the business mogul’s success and popularity have been undeniable for decades—that is, until he came out as a Republican.

Fast forward to this weekend. Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks October Surprise has been set in motion with another email and document dump ,this time with content from Hillary Clinton’s secretive Wall Street speeches. As promised, Trump was hit with an October Surprise of his own, in the form of a conversation with Billy Bush of entertainment news show “Access Hollywood" . Now I’m about to say something that I think everyone’s afraid to say: Donald Trump didn’t actually say anything that crazy. I know what you’re thinking, I do: “BUT HE SAID P***Y! HE HATES WOMEN!” But let’s just be real, normal people for a second. Who hasn’t had a private conversation that was a little graphic, and maybe a little offensive? I know I’ve made more graphic utterances in conversation with my girl friends. And the fact that this conversation occurred 11 years ago, in a closed trailer, on a hot mic of which one of the participating parties was clearly unaware? Really, this is news, after the WikiLeaks email dump, Juanita Broaddrick’s appearance on a podcast to talk about her encounters with the Clintons, Tom Brady’s return to football after being unfairly suspended by that scumbag Roger Gooddell, and on the eve of the second presidential debate? Are you kidding me? Get over yourselves, and let’s talk about the real news.

It’s impossible not to notice how conveniently timed the release of the #TrumpTapes was for Hillary Clinton. King of WikiLeaks Julian Assange released his long-awaited October surprise this week, and revealed that Clinton lied about almost everything. The Wall Street transcripts came to light, as well, and were eerily oppositional to Secretary Clinton’s accustomed disavowal of Wall Street Greed. Alongside her assertion that a politician must maintain “a public position and a private one”, Clinton also expressed sympathy for ‘Wall Street’s “Really Important Work.”’ How fortuitous for Mrs. Clinton, that a timely story regarding positions that could possibly lose more of the former Bernie Sanders crowd was suppressed by a (decade-old) comment from Mr. Trump’s media blitz after the success of his reality show. Fortuitous indeed.

Another issue that’s been buried by the media in favor of miniscule Trump drama is Bill Clinton’s frequent travels aboard the Lolita Express with registered sex offender pal Jeffrey Epstein. As flight logs show, Fmr. President Clinton even ditched his Secret Service detail on 11 occasions, and witnesses have seen him romping at Epstein’s Orgy Island. This news dogpiles atop the stories of Gennifer Flowers and Juanita Broaddrick. All these stories are evidence which paint Clinton as a much more sinister character than the suave, sax-playing dude that millennials are familiar with. It’s interesting, then, that at the same time that Breitbart publishes an interview with Ms. Broaddrick, Access Hollywood releases the footage of Donald Trump making less-than-savory comments on a hot mic. Interesting, to say the least.

For now, it seems that the Clinton campaign’s October surprise has fizzled out. In comparison, the #PodestaEmails seem to be gaining traction online, as wikileaks releases the hack’s contents in multiple parts. While it’s hard to picture the media turning 180 on the Clintons anytime soon, we’ll see what surfaces from the largely crowd-sourced efforts to sift through the information.

Stay informed, and stay focused. Tweet me at @LexiOnAnOdyssey