The Slatest

Today’s Trump Apocalypse Watch: Firings of a Dumpster Nature

Donald Trump in Las Vegas on Saturday.

John Gurzinski/AFP/Getty Images

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.

New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait is fond of describing Donald Trump’s presidential campaign as a garbage fire. Others prefer the related derisory term “dumpster fire.” The point either way is that, as a matter of managemental efficiency, the campaign is 1) bad and 2) in the process of being destroyed. It’s disorganized, it’s underfunded, and seems to be making big strategic mistakes. To wit: The sudden firing this morning of campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

Lewandowski was best known nationally for grabbing and pulling ex-Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields at a Trump event, then lying about having done so; it was also reported earlier this year that at a previous job Lewandowski called one female coworker a “bitch” and another a “cunt.”  Trump kept Lewandowski around the campaign for months after these incidents were made public, during which time he became involved in a power struggle with campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Only now, with Trump’s organization behind the eight ball logistically and financially, did Lewandowski get booted—in a surprise move on Monday morning that seems to have been orchestrated, intriguingly, by Trump’s children. Later in the day, a different top Trump adviser resigned after having mocked Lewandowski’s firing on Twitter. It’s hard to imagine a worse way, PR-wise, to handle Lewandowski’s ouster at a time that the Trump campaign is already having trouble making its case to voters. Our danger level stays low.

Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Getty Images, Wikimedia Commons