The Slatest

Today’s Trump Apocalypse Watch: He Just Can’t Help Himself

Donald Trump speaks to supporters at a rally at Erie Insurance Arena on Friday in Pennsylvania.

Jeff Swensen/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.

Donald Trump just can’t help himself. The Republican nominee began Friday by claiming that his recent (and repeated) suggestion that President Obama “founded ISIS” was simply “sarcasm.” Mere hours later, though, he’d reversed himself once again while reliving the moment in front of his supporters. “So I said, ‘the founder of ISIS’—obviously I’m being sarcastic,” Trump said at an afternoon rally in Pennsylvania, before interrupting himself again to add: “But not that sarcastic, to be honest with you.” And just like that, what otherwise what may have been a two-day story will now bleed into a third—that is, unless Trump finds some heretofore unknown third rail and grabs on with both hands before then.

Trump’s self-created controversies have come fast and furious since the Democratic National Convention, even by his all-press-is-good-press-even-when-it-is-clearly-bad-press standards. In the past 15 days alone he has: publicly feuded with the gold star parents of a fallen U.S. soldier; claimed the debate system is rigged and, later, that the election itself would be stolen from him this fall; suggested gun-rights advocates would do something to stop Hillary Clinton from appointing liberal Supreme Court justices; and said that Obama and Clinton “founded” ISIS, which he didn’t literally mean, unless on third thought maybe he actually did.

That’s five significant controversies in just 15 days—I say again: fifteen!—each of which Trump sustained by either repeating himself, reversing himself, or, both. Nearly as remarkable is that the frenzy around each only really began to fade when Trump stirred up a new one. At this point, it’s fair to wonder if this cycle will ever end or whether we’re all doomed to watch Trump careen from one controversy of his own making to the next until Election Day, if not for eternity. That would be a certain kind of hell, yes, but it would still be better than the apocalypse. Our danger level remains low!

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