The Slatest

Today’s Impeach-O-Meter: Crude Sexism Edition

Artist’s rendering of the feeling you get when a woman—a common BROAD—criticizes your performance as president.

Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

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.

Here’s a little glimpse “behind the scenes” of Slate.com: I wanted to elevate our Impeach-O-Meter after Trump made his widely condemned Thursday morning comments about MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski allegedly having a “bloody” face-lift. Then my editor, Allison Benedikt, pointed out that everyone already knows that Trump is a crude misogynist, and that past outbreaks of his misogyny have not, ultimately, materially affected his political standing. Which is true! So we’ll leave the meter the same as it was yesterday, although we are somewhat gleefully hoping that another Slate colleague, Michelle Goldberg, is correct when she suggests that the Mika incident is important not just in itself but as an indication that Trump, under heavy stress, is on the verge of losing even the small measure of composure he does have. In other words, the occasional insanely crass, inappropriate comment is, at this point, expected—but if today’s tweets are a sign Trump is going to start to let his predilection for dumb feuds completely overshadow the rest of his presidency, even congressional Republicans might start getting upset about it.

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.