Today’s Impeach-O-Meter: Trump Hits New Low in Gallup Poll

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.

I understand that it’s pretty astounding to suggest, less than a year into a president’s term, that there’s a 65 percent chance he’ll be removed (or remove himself) from office. But Donald Trump’s equivocating reaction to deadly white supremacist violence in Charlottesville—widely denounced even by Republicans—is only the latest embarrassment for a historically weak administration:

• News broke that Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s Virginia home had been raided by the FBI.
• News broke that special counsel Robert Mueller has convened a grand jury.
• Alt-right news outlets launched a smear campaign against national security adviser H.R. McMaster, one of the few administration figures who is even moderately well-respected by outside observers.
• Trump began complaining about Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell on Twitter in a peevish way that seems like it has no possible political upside.
• The North Korea crisis drove home the danger of Trump’s impulsiveness and tendency to see every issue only in terms of personal dominance dynamics.

Trump’s number in today’s Gallup approval tracking poll is 34 percent. The standard caveats apply about any single poll being subject to random fluctuation, but that’s a new low for his term—and it includes respondents who were polled before Charlottesville. Might we see Trump drop into the 20s?