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.
Today in the Wide World of Trump:
1. A new report from Politico details how Melania Trump’s often-told tale of coming to the United States doesn’t actually line up with the available evidence. It appears that either: a) She violated U.S. immigration law by working as a model in New York City while on a temporary visitor visa in the mid-’90s, or b) She had a visa that allowed her to work, which meant she never had to return regularly to her native Slovenia as she has publicly claimed on multiple occasions as a way to show that she, unlike the millions of undocumented immigrants her husband wants to deport, did things completely by the book. The real story here isn’t whether Melania did anything wrong, of course, but instead just how big of a hypocrite her husband is.
2. House Speaker (and face of the GOP establishment) Paul Ryan declared that his endorsement of Trump is not a “blank check,” and that it is theoretically possible that Ryan may one day decide to rescind his support. The bigger takeaway, however, is that Ryan hasn’t changed his mind about Trump even after the GOP nominee humiliated him earlier this week with carefully crafted non-endorsement.
3. Protesters waved pocket-sized copies of the U.S. Constitution at a Trump rally and were angrily booed by the pro-Trump crowd, which was exactly what the protesters wanted.
4. The Washington Post reports that the Trump campaign has lined up nearly two-dozen big-dollar fundraising events for this month. On one hand, that number suggests the GOP is somewhat desperate to keep up with the Clinton cash machine; on the other, it suggests the GOP’s rich and richer haven’t completely given up on Trump yet.
5. A new McClatchy-Marist national poll found Hillary Clinton leading Trump by a whopping 15 points, 48 percent to 33 percent, up a dozen points from when the same pollsters asked the question last month. And a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey found Clinton with a 9-point lead, 47 to 38, nearly double the one she held heading into the conventions. The latest RealClearPolitics rolling average, which does not yet include either new poll, had Clinton up 5.8 points on Trump.
So all in all: That’s a pretty bad day for Trump, albeit still a bit better than a few others this week. I’m keeping us where we were yesterday:
