The Slatest

Today’s Impeach-O-Meter: What if John Kelly Isn’t an Idiot?

Donald Trump and new White House chief of staff John Kelly at the White House on Monday.

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.

Today was a heck of a doozy of a day even by Trump White House standards: Per various reports, former Homeland Security director and new chief of staff John Kelly, who took his new job after Reince Priebus was dramatically fired last week, has pushed out communications director Anthony Scaramucci, who himself just got hired 10 days ago and had just helped push out Priebus.

On the one hand, this kind of insane chaos does not scream “administration that is highly functional and definitely going to make it to 2020 without engendering an epic governance catastrophe that results in Trump being chased out of the White House by a literal mob of enraged Medieval villagers carrying pitchforks and torches.” On the other hand, John Kelly ran the only Trump Cabinet department that is (unfortunately) actually following through on POTUS’ campaign promises, and firing Anthony Scaramucci is the kind of thing a competent chief of staff should do. Could John Kelly be the Mark Burnett of politics? (Burnett was the evil-genius reality-TV guru who ran The Apprentice, which was basically the only straightforward success Donald Trump has been involved in during the 21st century.) Obviously it’s too early to say, and Kelly could get fired tomorrow because Trump decided that Kelly is “a girl’s name,” but for now we’ll call today’s events a wash and leave the meter unchanged.

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.