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 is obsessed with terrorism; Islamic terrorists and Mexicans are like his two favorite things to talk about. So you’d think an actual, real incident of terrorism perpetrated by a Muslim individual on United States soil would be in his candidacy’s wheelhouse. That hasn’t been so in the past, though: After the Orlando, Florida, massacre, Trump fell in the polls after publicly gloating about having predicted an attack and reiterating his plans to ban Muslims from America. He also botched his response to bereaved military father Khizr Khan’s Democratic National Convention speech by bringing the Muslim ban into a conversation where it didn’t belong.
So how did Trump react after Ahmad Khan Rahami, who’s suspected of planting a number of explosive devices in the New York metro area this weekend, was arrested? Well, first Trump said (in the course of trying to complain about political correctness) that police officers in the United States are too scared of criticism to do anything about the known terrorist plotters in their midst, which is kind of an odd note to hit. Then he went on TV to whine about how Rahami has the right to an attorney. To me, that reads like talk-radio posturing that only endears him to people who were already going to vote for him; I don’t think it demonstrates the kind of reliability on national security issues that undecided voters and skeptical Republicans are looking for. Our danger level remains relatively low.
Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Getty Images, Wikimedia Commons
