“You are fired” was a famous and somewhat trademarked catchphrase of Trump’s as the host of the Apprentice reality show. The firing trend continued once he became president, and now it’s showing signs of backfiring. And his presidential fate is now the stuff of online betting.
Currently, there is a 77 percent chance of him getting impeached, according to the latest sentiment on the popular betting website PredictIt.
Investors use prediction markets to get a real-time barometer on the likelihood of certain political or any other events. However, in the last couple of years, Trump and his presidency have been the key focus of the prediction tool.
The odds of Trump's impeachment during his first term by the US House of Representatives spiked as the Democrat's impeachment inquiry uncovered new details on the Ukraine scandal.
Bets for a "yes" outcome first soared over $0.50 on the dollar in late September after news of the Ukraine scandal first broke and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced an impeachment inquiry.
Hundreds of thousands of trades are made daily in the impeachment market, up from tens of thousands per day prior to the Ukraine scandal.
Apparently, the breaking point was the Wednesday testimony of US acting Ukraine ambassador Bill Taylor, who detailed how the Trump administration explicitly tied aid for Ukraine to investigations into the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Biden family.
However, some other odds are in Trump’s favor, including the fact that only 56 percent of people think that he will be impeached by the end of the year.
In addition, traders on the platform currently see only an 18-percent chance of the Senate convicting him in his first term.
So far, PredictIt correctly anticipated several political events, including that the GOP would win the Senate and Democrats would reclaim the House in 2018 midterms, and that Boris Johnson would lead Britain’s Conservative Party.
However, the website was wrong on some other major events, including the outcome of the Brexit vote or even the outcome of the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections.
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Still, even though betting on political events can be considered purely as entertainment, quite a few big companies are using PredictIt to scope out the political landscape before making investment recommendations and decisions.
And betting houses aren’t the only ones placing odds on Trump and his administration. It was reported last year that even White House staffers had run an office game by placing odds on who would be the next one out the door.
Considering that Trump fired some 40 high-level officials, very few in person but on social media, there is a high probability that some placed bets against themselves.
Since taking over the Presidency, turnover within the most senior level of White House staff members hit 83 percent, according to nonprofit public policy organization Brookings
As a matter of fact, Trump has had more high-level Cabinet turnover than presidents Obama, Clinton, Reagan, and both President Bushs’ combined.
Currently, Trump advisors are predicting that Mick Mulvaney, acting White House Chief of Staff and nominal director of the Office of Management and Budget, will be fired as soon as the impeachment trial is over.
By Fred Dunkley for Safehaven.com
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