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.
Thursday’s two biggest campaign stories happened at roughly the same time:
- Hillary Clinton delivered a blistering takedown of the incoherent bluster that passes for Donald Trump’s foreign policy views.
- Paul Ryan announced that he will vote for Trump in November, a declaration his office quickly upgraded to a full-on “endorsement.”
The latter is yet more evidence that for all the #NeverTrump talk of the past year, most Republican politicians will fall in line when the other option is a Democrat. Ryan’s Trump endorsement was a measured one, yes, but his argument that a Republican-led Congress can accomplish far more of its goals with a President Trump than a President Clinton will likely resonate with his party’s faithful. It will also help further normalize Trump in the eyes of many Americans given Ryan’s official position as speaker of the House and his unofficial one as the face of the GOP establishment. None of that is good news for those of us who are staring at the horizon for signs the End of Days are nigh.
The former, though, is why I’m officially downgrading today’s danger level. Clinton’s speech was a stem-winder of the sorts we don’t normally see from the former secretary of state. Her pitch—the country can’t risk Trump having his finger on the button—was simple and straightforward, and made all the more forceful by the fact all she had to do to attack many of her opponent’s stated positions was to read them aloud. Her performance suggests that she’s ready and able to exploit Trump’s most glaring weaknesses: his unpredictability and incoherence.
Many on the left aren’t going to enjoy watching Hillary’s transition to the general election—during which she’ll make broad, centrist appeals like the one she did in San Diego today—but I suspect they’ll learn to live with a candidate they don’t like all that much over one they loathe. One horseman!
Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Getty Images, Wikimedia Commons
