Trump Must Go Before It’s Too Late. The 25th Amendment Is The Way Out.

25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Section 4

“Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”

The 25th Amendment and Presidential Fitness

The president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, spends much of each day talking gibberish. He spends many hours in the dead of night writing non-sensical texts filled with threats and hate and imagined grievance.

The general public is only marginally aware of how serious a problem this is because the media goes out of its way to sanewash his otherwise abnormal stream of consciousness.

Examples of Concerning Public Behavior

Such as when delivering his commencement speech to West Point graduates he wandered off his written remarks to muse about a dead land developer’s “trophy wives.”

And, later in his speech, included this advice to the cadets:

“You can achieve something really amazing. Think big. Third though, you gotta do this. Uh, brainpower you have to have, potential you have to have, but to be really successful, you’re always going to have to work hard. An example is a great athlete, Gary Player. Great golfer. He wasn’t as big as the other men that were playing against him; great, big, strong guys.

“Gary was a smaller guy. I don’t want to say too small. He is a friend of mine. He gets a little angry at people because he hits the ball just as far. He said, ‘I hit the ball further than them. Why am I small?’ But he worked very, very hard. He was always doing exercise, he was always—he was well ahead of his time.”

Or just the other day, lauding Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ plan to jail presumed illegal immigrants (both new and long-time residents) in the alligator infested Everglades.

Here’s his partial answer to the Fox News reporter’s question:

“Mr. President, is there an expected time frame that detainees will spend here? Days, weeks, months?”

Trump answered:

“In Florida? I’m going to spend a lot. Look, this is my home state. I love it, I love your government, I love all the people around. These are all friends of mine. They know very well. I mean, I’m not surprised that they do so well. They’re great people. Ron has been a friend of mine for a long time. I feel very comfortable in the state. I’ll spend a lot of time here. I want to, you know, for four years, I’ve got to be in Washington, and I’m okay with it because I love the White House. I even fixed up the little Oval Office, I make it—it’s like a diamond, it’s beautiful. It’s so beautiful. It wasn’t maintained properly, I will tell you that. But even when it wasn’t, it was still the Oval Office, so it meant a lot. But I’ll spend as much time as I can here. You know, my vacation is generally here, because it’s convenient. I live in Palm Beach. It’s my home. And I have a very nice little place, nice little cottage to stay at, right? But we have a lot of fun, and I’m a big contributor to Florida, you know, pay a lot of tax, and a lot of people moved from New York, and I don’t know what New York is going to do. A lot of people moved to Florida from New York, and it was for a lot of reasons, but one of them was taxes. The taxes are so high in New York, they’re leaving. I don’t know what New York’s going to do about that, because some of the biggest, wealthiest people, and some of the people that pay the most taxes of any people anywhere in the world, for that matter, they’re moving to Florida and other places. So we’re going to have to help some of these states out, I think. But thank you very much. I’ll be here as much as I can. Very nice question.”

Why the 25th Amendment Exists

If you don’t subscribe to historian Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter you’re not likely to have seen that exchange. Trump’s reply to the reporter’s simple question may be bizarre, but for Trump bizarre is more the rule than the exception.

It’s time that those who do know of Trump’s mental incapacity to step in and protect our country before he does even more harm to it.

The 25th Amendment was ratified precisely to deal with such situations.

The vice president and cabinet officers, all of whom must clearly know how unfit Trump is to hold such power, by simple majority vote can remove him from office and hand that power to the vice president.

Neither the president’s cabinet nor members of Congress can be oblivious to the peril of having a mentally disturbed person at the helm of the most powerful nation in the world. Those concerns certainly were manifest about Biden’s cognitive decline.

Is there any realistic likelihood of those who know Trump best acting to remove him from power? Well, the Republicans now have their huge tax cut, which was pretty much their only agenda for this Congress.

Now they need to stave off an electoral backlash for that vote and try to survive despite Trump’s growing unpopularity and unpredictability.

Removing Trump would be a service to their country, while removing a threat to their own political careers.

It’s time to think about it. Discuss it. And act on it.

Comments? Criticism? Contact Joe Rothstein at jrothstein@rothstein.net

Always Get It’s Always Something

Sign up to get the most recent column set to your inbox for free.

→ SUBSCRIBE