Trump's odds of staying in office: The Day 6 Impeach-O-Meter for March 1
Will former Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen's incendiary testimony move 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 his presidency will end in impeachment. These are, of course, subjective and hypothetical scores and the impeachment process is complex and dependent on many factors.
Jody Wilson-Raybould wasn't the only person to deliver popcorn-worthy testimony this week.
On Wednesday, Michael Cohen told a U.S. congressional committee that President Donald Trump is a "conman," a "cheat" and "racist."
The president's former lawyer also shared documents to back up allegations of criminal wrongdoing by his former boss.
Those documents included a copy of a wire transfer to adult film star Stormy Daniels and a copy of a cheque signed by Trump for $35,000 US in alleged "hush money."
As the political fallout from Cohen's testimony continued, Day 6 fired up the Impeach-O-Meter for the first time in 2019.
Every few weeks, we ask a political expert to weigh in on the odds of Trump being impeached, from one — meaning totally safe in the White House — to 100, meaning impeachment is imminent.
When we last checked in, Slate senior editor Dahlia Lithwick placed the Impeach-O-Meter at 38-and-a-half per cent — a 21.5-per-cent drop from the prior reading.
This week, New York Times opinion writer David Leonhardt, who also hosts the podcast The Argument, offered his take on the president's chances of impeachment.
Here's what he had to say:
I think the testimony of Michael Cohen pushed us a little bit closer to the idea that the Democrats would impeach President Trump.
I think it did so both because Cohen provided some corroborating evidence about a number of Trump's wrongdoings, but also because Cohen tantalizingly raised the possibility of other investigations that we don't know about. And then I'd add one other thing on this side of the ledger which may seem counterintuitive but anyone who watched the Cohen hearings this week, or read about them, would have seen Republicans just lining up to defend President Trump and attack any of his critics. And so it looks like Trump has very strong support from Republicans.
But if that support is broad, it's also shallow. The Republicans in Congress don't particularly like the president, and if Trump's popularity slips — it's already low — if it slips further I think he is at risk of losing some of his Republican support. And we saw that this week in that the Republicans really are not that strongly defending him over this emergency declaration to build a wall.
So for me when you put it all together this week it moves us a little bit closer, in a probabilistic sense, that eventually the Democratic House will impeach Trump. But there wasn't anything that altered the basic political dynamic we have at this point which is Republicans, unfortunately in my view, Republicans are lining up for now to support Trump.
So, where does David Leonhardt place the odds of a Donald Trump impeachment this week?
"I'm gonna put the number at 29 [per cent]," he says.
That marks a 9.5 per cent drop from Dahlia Lithwick's ranking at the end of December.
We'll continue to track the numbers in the weeks to come, and you can follow along here.
To hear David Leonhardt give his Impeach-O-Meter prediction, download our podcast or click the 'Listen' button at the top of this page.