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.
The action in D.C. is winding down as we head into a holiday weekend, and nothing happened today that seems likely to significantly affect Trump’s chances of being impeached for his many crimes. However, there was one generally ominous development: The president tweeted a graph.
The specific problem with this is that it is misleading in a quintessential Republican-politician way. Medicaid spending isn’t going “up” under the Senate health care bill simply because the actual literal amount of dollars spent on Medicaid gets higher. Medical costs actually go up every year too, and existing law already plans for spending increases in order to maintain current levels of coverage. The Senate health care bill would reduce, or cut, the amount of planned spending by $772 billion over a decade, which according to the Congressional Budget Office will result in 15 million fewer people being covered by Medicaid than would have been otherwise.
The broader problem with this is that despite his deep and extensive experience in the field of bullshit, Trump has not usually been one to lie with numbers, probably because it would require remembering or looking at numbers. If this is really a thing he’s getting into now, we’re all in trouble.
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.
