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.
The biggest development today in Trump World was probably that, in response to violence and protests across the country, he has declared himself to be the “law and order candidate.” It’s a move with obvious parallels to Richard Nixon’s 1968 strategy.
One big problem for Trump on this front, as Jamelle Bouie explained in a piece published days before Trump made his remarks, is the political context of 2016 differs from 1968 in key ways: There’s much less violence going on, and even many conservatives aren’t committed to the idea that police officers are never at fault for the shocking incidents of it that we do see. Meanwhile, the country’s most high-profile protest movement denounces violence as a political tactic. There’s less hay to be made now than there was for Nixon on this subject.
The other problem is that Trump has a well-documented history of violating laws, getting sued, and associating with criminals. His public reputation is more akin to Nixon’s after Watergate than Nixon’s in ‘68.
Our danger level remains low.
Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Getty Images, Wikimedia Commons
