Trump's odds of staying in office: The Day 6 Impeach-O-Meter for June 9
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.
You can't talk about U.S. President Donald Trump these days without the spectre of impeachment being raised.
While many pundits feel such speculation is premature, even some Republicans believe the current investigation into Russian ties to the White House could end in impeachment.
As the American political news cycle maintains its perpetual tornado of twists and turns — the latest being former FBI director James Comey's testimony before the Senate intelligence committee — we've been inviting our favourite political commentators to give us their take on the week's events, and whether they've shifted the needle on the Day 6 Impeach-O-Meter.
For our debut Impeach-O-Meter reading, New Republic senior editor Jeet Heer put Trump's odds of impeachment at 20 per cent.
In the second installment, Lisa Goldman, founding editor and contributing writer and +972 Magazine, placed the probability of a Trump impeachment at just 10 per cent.
This week, we spoke to Upworthy writer Parker Molloy. Here's her take on where the possibility of impeachment stands following Comey's testimony:
While Trump's approval rating is still in the dumps, hovering in the mid-to-high 30s according to Gallup, his support with Republican voters and congressional Republicans remains pretty solid. Unless that support starts to erode — which I honestly feel would take some sort of catastrophe the likes of which we've never seen in U.S. history — there's almost no chance the GOP-controlled house will move to impeach him.
If Democrats can retake the House, which would require them to flip something like 24 seats in 2018, that's when I think the odds of impeachment would increase in a big way.
Still, it's never great when you've got pretty much every major TV network running live coverage of a Congressional hearing where the recently-fired FBI director opens up about events that may constitute obstruction of justice.
In other administrations, this might be enough to impeach (maybe not remove from office, but at least get impeachment through the House). But we live in really strange times.
So what's Molloy's prediction as to the probability of a Donald Trump impeachment this week?
"15 per cent."
That's this week's edition of the Impeach-O-Meter. We'll continue to track the numbers in the weeks to come.
To hear Parker Molloy give her Impeach-O-Meter prediction, download our podcast or click the 'Listen' button at the top of this page.