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.
Fresh off stints in Saudi Arabia and Israel that consisted mostly of weird or bungled photo-op appearances, the Trump administration is somehow feeling very good about itself. Here is an actual quote from a “senior administration official” who did a briefing aboard Air Force One on Tuesday:
I think this trip was a big success because it was unexpected. It went in the heart of one of the, I always say that the president is always at his best when he’s doing big things that are unexpected. … He was able to really go into Saudi Arabia, the custodian of the holy mosques, and then Donald Trump united the entire Muslim world in a way that it really hasn’t been in many years.
Presumably, this is a reference to Trump’s speech in Saudi Arabia, which my colleague Fred Kaplan described as a signal to oppressive Sunni governments that they can keep on oppressing their people and demonizing Shiites, particularly those in Iran. So, in addition to being obviously ludicrous in the bigger scheme of things, this administration official’s claim falls apart even if you read it extremely generously to mean that all Muslim governments liked Trump’s speech. (Iran is also a Muslim country.)
All this aside, Trump himself seems to have made it through the day today without committing any horrific, crippling gaffes, which counts as a triumph at this point. We’ll lower our likelihood accordingly.
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.
