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’s Tuesday was even quieter than his Monday, which is to say very quiet. What is going on here exactly? Has Trump lost his high-energy ways? Or is the media just getting bored with him?
The biggest news out of Trump-world was a New York Times report that disgraced former Fox News chief Roger Ailes is advising Trump in the lead-up to the presidential debates. Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks, however, denied the report describing it as “not accurate.”*
The next biggest item in Trump-town was news that he has spent zero dollars and zero cents in television advertising toward the general election campaign. As my colleague Josh Voorhees noted, the Republican Party raised $82 million in July and has $74 million on hand, so there is little financial reason for Trump to be holding off on advertising. As with many things this man does, it’s all a bit of a mystery.
As for new polls, NBC News and Survey Monkey were out with a national survey putting Hillary Clinton ahead of Trump, in a four-way race that included Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, by six points, right around the RealClearPolitics national average. State polls released on Tuesday were no better for Trump. According to the Washington Post, he trails by seven in a four-way race in crucial Virginia. And according to Monmouth, he trails by nine in a four-way race in even more crucial Florida. And according to PPP he leads by only six in the staunchly red Republican fortress of Texas. That’s right, Texas.
So, yeah: Donald Trump still not likely to become president and trigger global Armageddon.
Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Getty Images, Wikimedia Commons
*Correction, Aug. 17, 2016: This post originally mispelled Hope Hicks’ last name.
