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.
“Give me a break,” Trump declared Tuesday evening on Fox News as he attempted to dismiss the flood of criticism that he unleashed when he made a loaded comment about gun-rights advocates doing something (wink, wink) to stop a President Hillary Clinton from appointing liberal judges to the Supreme Court. Trump maintains, rather absurdly I might add, that he wasn’t making a politically incorrect (and incredibly dangerous) joke, but instead talking only about the political power of opponents of gun control.
Wednesday made clear that he would be getting no such break. As I write this—more than 24 hours after Trump ad-libbed his line about “Second Amendment people” and what they’re capable of—the GOP nominee’s comments and the reaction to them from both his political allies and enemies continue to dominate the campaign conversation. The squirming by his own party has been particularly noteworthy. “Nearly unanimously,” Politico reports, “Republicans said the remarks were being blown out of proportion, but few could offer a justification for the aside beyond acknowledging it was an ill-conceived line.” The problem for Trump, and the reason this story will spawn a few extra news cycles, is that he is refusing to concede it was even that. In his telling, “there can be no other interpretation” than his own, which puts him awkwardly at odds with many of those daring to defend him.
Eventually, this controversy will either fade into memory along with all the other absurd things Trump has said and done this year, or be superseded by a new entry to that lengthy list. But what should be clear by now is that this is the only way Trump knows how to campaign, and he won’t be changing course between now and November, either because he doesn’t want to or because he doesn’t know how.
That all-press-is-good-press strategy worked better in the GOP primary than anyone could have imagined. Trump dominated his rivals in the polls and preformed almost as well in the actual nominating contests themselves. But the general election—which kicked off in earnest only two weeks ago, mind you—is a different story. And the current polling suggests that the more voters watch Trump be Trump the less likely they are to want Trump to be president. Our danger level remains low:
