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.
If there’s one takeaway from Donald Trump’s decision to install Breitbart News’ Steve Bannon as chief executive of his campaign on Wednesday, it is this: If and when Trump eventually exits stage left, it will only be after he douses that stage with gasoline and sets it ablaze.
Bannon’s presence—along with the corresponding sidelining of Paul Manafort—suggests the campaign will return to the “Let Trump Be Trump” ethos pushed by former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski during the primary. As one unnamed Trump aide put it to the Washington Post, Trump hired Bannon because he had started to feel “boxed in” and “controlled” by Manafort and his allies. Given Bannon’s love of conspiracy theories and hatred of the GOP establishment, it stands to reason then that Trump’s id will once again be allowed to run free.
If that weren’t frightening enough, consider all the outrageous and offensive things Trump has said and done in the three weeks since the conventions, and at time he was ostensibly being held in check by Manafort. There was his feud with the parents of a fallen U.S. soldier; his joke about Russian hackers; his hints that he might sit out the general election debates; his claim that the election would be stolen from him; his suggestion that gun-rights advocates would do something to stop Hillary Clinton; and his comments that President Obama and Hillary Clinton “founded” ISIS. If that was Trump holding his tongue, the mind strains to imagine what he would have said if he really let loose!
The good news, at least as far as counting horsemen is concerned, is that it’s difficult to see how this will help Trump between now and November. While I am more terrified than ever about the long-term fallout that would follow a Trump loss, I am as confident as ever that we’re going to have the chance to find out. Our danger level remains low:
