The Slatest

Today’s Impeach-O-Meter: Will (Allegedly) Comparing His Porno Girlfriend to His Daughter Hurt the President Politically?

Stormy Daniels at the Grammys in Los Angeles in 2008.
Stormy Daniels at the Grammys in Los Angeles in 2008. Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

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 answer to the gross but relevant question posed in the headline above—and, as always, remember how much you paid to read this post before complaining about how wildly subjective and speculative it is—is “maybe.”

On the one hand, you have the hard 36 percent floor of “base” support below which Trump’s aggregate approval rating has never dropped no matter how bad the news has gotten for him. His polarizing personality and checkered biography is for the most part already priced in to his political standing.

On the other hand, it’s the assumption of the Impeach-O-Meter that Trump gets into serious danger if Democrats win a massive landslide in this year’s midterms and the remaining congressional Republicans become convinced that POTUS is a political anchor. To keep that from happening, Trump needs his base to be motivated to vote in November. Meanwhile, one conclusion almost all pieces about Trump voters seem to draw is that even many of his loyal supporters don’t love his habit of engaging in embarrassing/childish feuds and ego-obsessions on Twitter and elsewhere. (The idea seems to be that they want him to keep his eye on the ball and be more “presidential” now that he’s, well, the president.) And having the entire media fixated on a porn actress who apparently once discussed Trump’s mediocre sexual performance and described his genitals in a now-forthcoming interview does seem like the kind of thing that just might set him off, feud-wise. Ultimately, that could alienate enough of his potential voters to have real consequences.

Today’s meter is unchanged. We’ll see!

Impeach-O-Meter: 45 percent.