The Slatest

Today’s Trump Apocalypse Watch: Another Way It Could End

Donald Trump in Phoenix on Saturday.

Ralph Freso/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.

Well, the big news today is that Donald Trump’s campaign is raising a shockingly low amount of money and is very low on cash. Gawker, meanwhile, is speculating about how Trump might get out of the race if he decides he has to do so, and the polls aren’t getting any friendlier to him. And Mark Cuban is trolling him on Twitter for being poor.

All of this brings up a possibility I hadn’t considered: That Trump could leave the race not because he’s losing and wants to save face but simply because he can’t afford it. You can’t run a campaign without money, you can’t spend money yourself if you’re not as rich as you’ve been claiming and the assets you do have are illiquid, and you can’t spend other people’s money if you’re bad at raising it and they suspect you might just funnel it to your own businesses.

It’s a pretty big obstacle. On the other hand, there’s a lot of time left before the Republican convention—plenty of time for Trump to undergo the campaign professionalization and personality makeover has been expected of him for months, which would give Republican leaders and donors fodder with which to claim he’s earned their trust and support. The open question, as always, is whether earning that trust and support is important enough to Trump to give up his cherished longtime identity as a belligerent, racist gasbag. It can be hard to change who we are!

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