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.
Signs have emerged this week that Donald Trump is trying to start make himself look marginally less unhinged for purposes of general electability, and today we learned that this is indeed an official, intentional campaign strategy. Writes Slate’s Josh Voorhees:
“When he’s sitting in a room, he’s talking business, he’s talking politics in a private room, it’s a different persona,” [Trump aide] Paul Manafort said at a private meeting with RNC members at their spring summit in Florida, a recording of which was obtained by the New York Times, Washington Post and other outlets. “When he’s out on the stage, when he’s talking about the kinds of things he’s talking about on the stump, he’s projecting an image that’s for that purpose.” At another point in Manafort’s presentation—which reportedly included PowerPoint slides—the veteran GOP strategist declared: “He gets it. The part that he’s been playing is evolving into the part that now you’ve been expecting, but he wasn’t ready for because he had to first feed the first phase.”
As with Trump’s other moves this week—hiring veteran consultants, meeting with lobbyists—the “telling the party bigwigs that you didn’t mean any of the racist stuff” strategy has a pretty obvious downside, namely that it will alienate the voters who liked Trump in the first place because he was authentic without actually convincing anyone else that he’s not a bigot. Still, the internal acknowledgement that Trump has work to do before November is a worrisome sign of rationality that justifies keeping our danger level at a relatively high two horsemen.
Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Getty Images, Wikimedia Commons
