The Slatest

Today’s Impeach-O-Meter: Republican Support Slips Slightly

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov looking mean in Moscow on Nov. 27, 2015.

Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters

In the tradition of the Clintonometer and the Trump Apocalypse Watch, the Impeach-O-Meter is a wildly subjective and speculative daily estimate of the likelihood that Donald Trump leaves office before his term ends, whether by being impeached (and convicted) or by resigning under threat of same.

Donald Trump will be impeached if he becomes unpopular with Republican voters. If he doesn’t, he won’t be. (Analysis!) On that front, there were some not-good signs for him today.

First, as my colleague Will Saletan noted, a new Politico/Morning Consult poll found that only 22 percent of respondents thought Trump acted appropriately in disclosing top-secret Israeli intelligence to Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador.

(Nixon’s approval rating when he left office was down to 24 percent.)

While Trump’s overall approval rating in the same Politico poll is still at a poor but non-disastrous 41 percent, the much lower approval for his Israel disclosure indicates that there is a bloc of voters who are still forgiving of the president overall but are not such fanatics that they will go along with absolutely everything he does. And indeed, Reuters’ rolling average poll finds that Trump’s disapproval rating among Republicans—his diehards—has risen by 8 percent since last Thursday, from 15 percent to 23 percent.

Those polling results, meanwhile, came out before news broke that Trump also told Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador that he was glad he fired James Comey because it would relieve the “pressure” that he’d been enduring because of Comey’s Russia collusion investigation. All considered, we’ll raise the likelihood that Trump leaves office before 2020 to 35 percent.

Photo illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo. Photos by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, Win McNamee/Getty Images, Chris Kleponis-Pool/Getty Images, Drew Angerer/Getty Images, and Peter Parks-Pool/Getty Images.

Photo illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo. Photos by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, Win McNamee/Getty Images, Chris Kleponis-Pool/Getty Images, Drew Angerer/Getty Images, and Peter Parks-Pool/Getty Images.