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The 25th Amendment: Can Trump Be Removed From Office For Being Nuts?

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Mod: Interesting Vanity Fair piece that discusses what many have come to believe is true. America just might have its very first insane President, and the consequences could be extremely dire. That is, unless he is removed from office first.

“I Hate Everyone In The White House!”: Trump Seethes As Advisers Fear The President Is “Unraveling” (Vanity Fairlink): At first it sounded like hyperbole, the escalation of a Twitter war. But now it’s clear that Bob Corker’s remarkable New York Times interview—in which the Republican senator described the White House as “adult day care” and warned Trump could start World War III—was an inflection point in the Trump presidency. It brought into the open what several people close to the president have recently told me in private: that Trump is “unstable,” “losing a step,” and “unraveling.”

The conversation among some of the president’s longtime confidantes, along with the character of some of the leaks emerging from the White House has shifted. There’s a new level of concern. NBC News published a report that Trump shocked his national security team when he called for a nearly tenfold increase in the country’s nuclear arsenal during a briefing this summer. One Trump adviser confirmed to me it was after this meeting disbanded that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump a “moron.”

In recent days, I spoke with a half dozen prominent Republicans and Trump advisers, and they all describe a White House in crisis as advisers struggle to contain a president who seems to be increasingly unfocused and consumed by dark moods. Trump’s ire is being fueled by his stalled legislative agenda and, to a surprising degree, by his decision last month to back the losing candidate Luther Strange in the Alabama Republican primary. “Alabama was a huge blow to his psyche,” a person close to Trump said. “He saw the cult of personality was broken.”

According to two sources familiar with the conversation, Trump vented to his longtime security chief, Keith Schiller, “I hate everyone in the White House! There are a few exceptions, but I hate them!” (A White House official denies this.) Two senior Republican officials said Chief of Staff John Kelly is miserable in his job and is remaining out of a sense of duty to keep Trump from making some sort of disastrous decision. Today, speculation about Kelly’s future increased after Politico reported that Kelly’s deputy Kirstjen Nielsen is likely to be named Homeland Security Secretary—the theory among some Republicans is that Kelly wanted to give her a soft landing before his departure.

One former official even speculated that Kelly and Secretary of Defense James Mattis have discussed what they would do in the event Trump ordered a nuclear first strike. “Would they tackle him?” the person said. Even Trump’s most loyal backers are sowing public doubts. This morning, The Washington Post quoted longtime Trump friend Tom Barrack saying he has been “shocked” and “stunned” by Trump’s behavior.

Mod: There is more to this story, and you can read it all by clicking the link at the top. So can Donald Trump be removed from office for being bananas? Apparently moves are being made to do just that.

The 25th Amendment at 50: Democratic bill lays groundwork to remove Trump from office in historic move (Salon link): In the year of its 50th anniversary, the 25th Amendment is suddenly seeing a surge in relevance -- so much so that there are even reports of the White House itself taking notice. This has been precipitated, of course, by a recent bill sponsored by Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, one that would create a congressional "oversight" commission which could declare President Donald Trump to be incapacitated under the 25th Amendment and consequently remove him from office.

As Raskin explained to Yahoo News, "In case of emergency, break glass. If you look at the record of things that have happened since January, it is truly a bizarre litany of events and outbursts."

The 25th Amendment was ratified in the immediate aftermath of President John F. Kennedy's assassination, with the goal of providing a thorough outline for what should happen in the event that the president or vice president should be killed, incapacitated or resigns from their office. It was officially ratified on February 10, 1967.

The section of the amendment that pertains to Raskin's bill states that "whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal  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."

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