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.
It’s usually a bad sign for a presidential candidate when Congressional candidates in your own party don’t want you to campaign for them in their districts/states. This down-ballot distancing happened to Barack Obama in 2012, and although he obviously ended up winning, things got pretty hairy for a while. But Republican Illinois senator Mark Kirk is taking it to the next level: Not only does he not want to be seen with Donald Trump, he’s running an ad denouncing the real-estate heir by name. Writes Slate’s Josh Voorhees:
“Mark Kirk bucked his party to say Donald Trump is not fit to be commander in chief,” declares Kirk’s latest television commercial in Illinois. The 30-second spot is not a full-on attack ad against the GOP’s presumptive nominee, but it does amplify the Democrats’ main critique that Trump is temperamentally unfit to be president. (The ad also touts the GOP senator’s support for holding a confirmation vote on Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland and of a “women’s right to choose” as further proof of his bipartisan bona fides.)
Here’s some sophisticated political analysis: Donald Trump is going to have a hard time winning the state of Illinois in November.
Trump himself, incidentally, is headed to Scotland on a business trip involving two golf courses, one of which is involved in a dispute with local property owners who’ve signaled their distaste for Trump, as you can see above, by raising Mexican flags on their property.
I don’t think that has any bearing on whether Trump is going to win the election, but it’s funny!
Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Getty Images, Wikimedia Commons
