The Trump Apocalypse Watch is a subjective daily estimate, using a scale of one to four horsemen, of how likely it is that Donald Trump will be elected president, thus triggering an apocalypse in which we all die.
On Friday, I asserted that it will be difficult for Donald Trump to win the presidency unless he can convince niche special interest groups such as “women” and “all nonwhite people” that he’s not a jackass. As of last week, there was no sign he was trying to convince anyone of that; on Friday, Trump and his supporters were mainly engaged in suggesting that Ted Cruz’s wife is ugly and that Ted Cruz himself is an adulterer. As of today, well … nothing has changed. The candidate himself again insinuated over the weekend that he has as-yet-undisclosed information about Heidi Cruz that would be scandalous; he also said that the National Enquirer, which suggested with very little evidence that Ted Cruz might have had five extramarital affairs, has a “very good record of being right.” Meanwhile, Trump’s social media director retweeted a incoherent video that appears to suggest that Cruz had an affair with former staffer and conservative pundit Amanda Carpenter. (There is no evidence of this and Carpenter has denied it.)
In other words, Donald Trump’s reputation with women and independent voters has probably not improved in the last three days, and it still seems unlikely (knock on wood) that he will be elected.
Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Getty Images, Wikimedia Commons
