Trump's odds of staying in office: The Day 6 Impeach-O-Meter for July 27
Will Robert Mueller's public testimony shift the Impeach-O-Meter needle?
When Donald Trump generates headlines, Day 6 fires up the "Impeach-O-Meter," inviting political experts to estimate the odds that Donald Trump will be impeached by the House of Representatives. These are, of course, subjective and hypothetical scores and the impeachment process is complex and dependent on many factors.
On Wednesday, for the very first time, former special counsel Robert Mueller publicly answered much-anticipated questions about his 22-month investigation of U.S. President Donald Trump.
During this testimony, Mueller didn't provide more analysis beyond his original report. Nonetheless, Democrats hoping to underscore his most damning findings found the high-profile hearings valuable to their cause.
"Mueller found evidence of obstruction of justice and abuses of power by the president," said Rep. Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, following Mueller's testimony.
Republicans, however, saw things differently.
"[What] we heard today only help to reinforce the facts, that there is no collusion and there is no obstruction," said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
Despite those conflicting interpretations of the hearings, the renewed spotlight on Mueller's investigation has reinvigorated some Democrats' calls for impeachment — so we're once again firing up the Day 6 Impeach-O-Meter.
Every few weeks, we ask a political expert to weigh in on the odds that Donald Trump will be impeached by the House of Representatives, from one — meaning totally safe in the White House — to 100, meaning impeachment is imminent.
When we last checked on May 3, Daily Beast reporter Eleanor Clift raised the Impeach-O-Meter to 57 per cent.
This week, we asked Shira Tarlo, a political reporter with Salon, to give us her reading.
Here's part of what she told Day 6:
So this week was perhaps one of the busiest weeks on Capitol Hill. We had former special counsel Robert Mueller testify publicly for the first time about his investigation into Russian interference.
Democrats hoped that his appearance would bolster their investigation into whether the President obstructed justice and boost public support to launch impeachment proceedings against President Trump.
Republicans, on the other hand, hope that Mueller's testimony would confirm their belief that the special counsel's investigation was illegitimate and politically motivated.
Mueller's testimony was pretty dry; he was cautious; he refused to step into the fray of partisan politics ... Neither side really got what they were looking for.
So Mueller's testimony did not seem to change the way top Democrats felt about impeachment.
So, where does Shira Tarlo place the odds of a Donald Trump impeachment this week?
"43 per cent," she said.
That marks an decrease of 14 per cent over the previous reading.
We'll continue to track the numbers in the weeks to come, and you can follow along here.
Editor's note: When we started the Impeach-O-Meter, we settled on getting people who watch U.S. politics closely to estimate the odds that Donald Trump's presidency would "end in impeachment." We've come to realize that it wasn't always clear whether that meant that the U.S. House of Representatives would vote to impeach him or that additionally, the U.S. Senate would vote to remove him from office as a result of being impeached by the House of Representatives.
We've always intended that to mean being impeached by the House of Representatives, so for the sake of clarity, we've changed the language to "the odds that Donald Trump will be impeached by the House of Representatives."