The Slatest

Today’s Impeach-O-Meter: America Demands President Pence

Donald Trump on Friday in Bedminster, New Jersey.

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.

A recent poll estimates that 70 percent of U.S. voters don’t think Donald Trump has the right “temperament” to be president. In another poll, 4 in 10 Republicans said he was “unpresidential.” We’re currently involved in a nuclear standoff with North Korea. Bad judgment and unpresidential behavior could, in a matter of minutes, create the greatest catastrophe in human history. But there’s an alternative: Mike Pence could be president!

Yes, Mike Pence, the unctuous right-wing stuffed shirt who lives at the Naval Observatory. He’s craven, sure, he’s dishonest, yes he’s got retrograde opinions about LGBTQ rights, absolutely—but is he an impulsive narcissist? No, and that’s all that counts right now, as far as not causing tens of millions of people to be instantaneously vaporized in white-hot death-fire.

Many Slate readers would probably object to 99 percent of what Pence might do as president. You know what that other 1 percent would constitute, though? Not getting in a stupid personal game of chicken with the leader of a nuclear-armed North Korea.

Congress should impeach Donald Trump and make Mike Pence president.

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.