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.
A few unrelated things happened today that were bad for Trump’s chances of successfully finishing his term.
- The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins, who is well-sourced in Trumpworld, published a piece in which people close to the president speculate that it’s possible that one of the many flunkies and weirdos circulating around Trump’s 2016 campaign could, without his knowledge, have engaged in some sort of Russia-connected scheming that might fairly be called “collusion.” To be clear, the sources don’t say they’re aware of any such activity—but the fact that they admit it’s possible is a pretty good sign that, well, it’s possible.
- FiveThirtyEight launched an aggregator that tracks how Americans are responding to a standard poll question about how they would vote in a congressional election between a generic Democrat and a generic Republican. This question turns out to be highly predictive of national seat gains and losses—and, per FiveThirtyEight, the Democratic Party is currently in better position for midterm gains than any other minority party since their data begins in 1942.
- The Intercept published a post about an NSA report which concludes that Russia tried to hack into the computers of more than 100 U.S. voting officials in November 2016. That’s the same Russia to which Trump recently disclosed top-secret Israeli intelligence.
On Friday, I raised our meter reading to 40 percent, but that was a move borne of whimsy and optimism. Today, that 40 percent seems a lot more solid.
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.
