The Slatest

Today’s Trump Apocalypse Watch: Newts Rule Everything Around Me

Don and Newt in Cincinnati on July 6.

John Sommers II/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.

The Newt Train is speeding up: After being discussed for weeks as a leading contender to join Trump on the ticket, Newt Gingrich appeared on Fox News today to coyly discuss Trump’s VP options just as the network announced Gingrich would be temporarily suspended from his role as a commentator to prevent a conflict-of-interest situation from developing.

As I’ve written before, Newt doesn’t have much of a national following anymore and is widely thought of as a clown who will say anything to get attention. The upshot? He’s a clown who will say anything—a perfect fit for the Trump campaign, which is mostly conducted via cable news and spends a lot of its time denying obviously true things in ludicrous fashion. Choosing Newt wouldn’t raise our danger level, but it also wouldn’t lower it.

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