Trump and the 25th amendment
By 
A friend writes:
The biggest unknown in assessing Trump’s chances of serving four years is not his health. It’s not his heart or his sugar levels or anything. It’s the willingness of the GOP to move on when his insanity becomes too much for them to manage. It’s whether the GOP is willing to invoke the 25th when he starts publicly demanding executions of political rivals and threatens to invade Scotland if they don’t approve a variance for his golf course.
Last night Trump posted this on his offbrand Twitter:
“As of today, the incoming Trump Administration has hired over 1,000 people for The United States Government,” Trump’s post reads. “They are outstanding in every way, and you will see the fruits of their labor over the coming years. We will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, and it will happen very quickly!
“In order to save time, money, and effort, it would be helpful if you would not send, or recommend to us, people who worked with, or are endorsed by, Americans for No Prosperity (headed by Charles Koch), ‘Dumb as a Rock’ John Bolton, ‘Birdbrain’ Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, disloyal Warmongers Dick Cheney, and his Psycho daughter, Liz, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, General(?) Mark Milley, James Mattis, Mark Yesper, or any of the other people suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, more commonly known as TDS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
The frog that boils slowly metaphor is appropriate here. Trump is a narcissistic dimwit and blowhard, who has been saying outrageous things for so long that it’s easy to get lulled into a complacent sense that nothing has or will change in regard to his mental/emotional stability and related cognitive competence, or lack thereof. Trump is five months older than Biden was in 2020 and that didn’t turn out too great in regard to related issues, plus Trump’s basic health habits, to the extent those are relevant, are obviously far worse than Biden’s, plus Trump’s father developed full blown dementia at not much older of an age than Trump is now, so yeah . . .
Anyway this brings us to the 25th amendment, which is something I’ve looked at quite closely, and to make a long story short is a phrase whose origins are complicated and rambling . . . where was I? Oh yes: removing a bonkers president via the 25th. It’s not happening in Trump’s case, period.
The problem here is that the existing mechanism — having a majority of the cabinet sign a letter the Vice President presents to them and then transmits to Congress — is a complete non-starter even at that point in the overall process for removal. If such a letter were signed, which isn’t going to happen (more on that in a moment), two thirds of the House and two thirds of the Senate would both have to agree within 21 days of Trump contesting the matter to ratify Trump’s removal, which also isn’t going to happen for reasons that are too obvious to belabor, not that things would ever get that far, which they wouldn’t.
Trump can fire any cabinet officer at any time for any reason, and in addition these people have clearly been pre-selected for their cultish obeisance, so we’re not getting an internal coup from the Hillbilly Whisperer, no bad how things get. I mean that quite literally, as in there’s nothing Trump could possibly say or do that would lead to his removal via the existing 25th amendment process. BTW the amendment itself provides that Congress via legislation could replace the cabinet with some other body for the purposes of this process, which Congress should definitely do at some point once the madness has passed and things are back to Normal ™.
But if Trump completely flips out/goes unmistakably senile, he’s going to have to be removed via some other mechanism than the Constitutionally Approved method.