Incredibly, the Constitution was not specific. Did the vice president become acting president? Did his title remain vice president, but with executive powers?
The vice president, John Tyler, decided, on his own, to have a judge administer the presidential oath, and he spent the rest of his time in the White House refusing to answer to anything except “President Tyler.”
But even as six more presidents died in office, the process was still unofficial. Worse yet, twice in the twentieth century, presidents became incapacitated while in office. Not only did Woodrow Wilson suffer a stroke sixteen months before the end of his term, but, as we are only now learning, the stroke affected his ability to fully understand that . . . he had had a stroke.
President Wilson fought or fired anybody who suggested he should give up the presidency, permanently or temporarily.
Besides which—there were no constitutional means for Wilson to give up the presidency temporarily, and the Constitution still had no official succession process, not for a resignation and certainly not for a forced removal because the president could no longer discharge the powers and duties of his office.
And then, on September 24, 1955, while playing golf, President Dwight Eisenhower had a heart attack. The stock market panicked, lost $14 billion in one day. Eisenhower was hospitalized for seven weeks. And still there was no provision for the vice president—Richard Nixon—to even briefly assume executive powers.
Finally, the assassination of President Kennedy, in 1963, brought the matter to a head. Not only did the succession need to be spelled out in a constitutional amendment, but so did temporary transfer of power, and a new idea—that if the vice presidency became vacant, the president should be able to nominate a new vice president.
And it also became clear that death or resignation or impeachment could undo an election. If, say, Eisenhower—a Republican—had died or resigned, and Nixon—a Republican—had succeeded him, and then died or resigned or been impeached and removed, the constitutional succession meant the Speaker of the House would then become president.
The Speaker of the House for the last six years of Eisenhower’s term was Sam Rayburn—a Democrat. Control of the presidency would have changed parties without an election.
So. In 1965, the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution was proposed, and two years later it was enacted. Section 1 spelled out the succession to the vacant presidency. Section 2 allowed the president to nominate a new vice president—which would promptly happen twice in the next seven years. Section 3 permitted the president to temporarily transfer power to the vice president—which promptly happened for seven hours and fifty-four minutes after Ronald Reagan was shot.
And then . . . there is section 4.
Written nearly fifty-two years ago, with Woodrow Wilson in mind, and yet it might as well have been named for Donald Trump.
Probably easier if I just read this verbatim:
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.
There’s more—but I hope you didn’t miss the key point here.
No hearings.
No doctors.
No conferences.
No impeachments.
The vice president and merely most of the cabinet write to Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate President Pro Tempore Orrin Hatch, and they say the president is unable to do the job . . . annnnd the vice president becomes acting president.
No hearings, no doctors, no conferences, no impeachments.
Just “Bye, Felicia.”
Of course, the suddenly suspended president can try to regain power.
To resume:
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office . . .
Round one: They say he’s unfit.
Round two: He says he’s fine—he resumes office.
Not so fast.
There is a round three.
He shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days 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.
Yes. Invest in popcorn futures.
If the vice president and his crew still say the president is unfit—the president is not restored to power.
But wait—there’s more. There’s a round four.
Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.
Instant impeachment.
Four days for the vice president and the cabinet to state again that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties,” triggering a vote by the House and the Senate within about three weeks. And a two-thirds vote results in the president remaining in office with the title but without the power.
So it’s a crazy-man clause, right?
In the case of Trump, it presumes he behaves as president as he is behaving as president-elect.
Which is a good presumption, because as president-elect, he’s behaving as he did as a candidate.
For example: twenty-four of his first thirty-eight tweets after the election consisted of the following:
Six complaints about The New York Times, four about the cast of Hamilton (one deleted), one complaint about Saturday Night Live, one complaint about how unfair protesters are, one complaint about a news story, three boasts about who called to congratulate him, two claims he could’ve won by a larger margin, two lies about keeping a Ford plant from moving to Mexico that was never moving to Mexico, two rationalizations about the $25 million he had to pay to avoid a trial for fraud, and two promos for a TV appearance (one deleted).
For my money—he’s nuts.
Couldn’t pass a sanity test.
Open book.
But of course . . . section 4 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment doesn’t say “nuts” or “impaired” or “erratic” or “unbalanced” or “unhealthy” or “bipolar” or “narcissistic” or “sociopathic” or “psychopathic.”
It only says that when “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.”
Ohhhhhh!
Kind of vague, huh?
If he was fine physically, even passable psychologically, the vice president could still clothesline Trump because he was—just to pick a few inappropriate behaviors at random—oh, bringing his daughter to meetings with the prime minister of Japan, or interrupting state business to meet with his Indian partners about “Trump Tower Mumbai,” or pocketing profits by gently suggesting to foreign diplomats that the president would really like it if they all stayed at his hotel in Washington, or opening up eight new businesses in Saudi Arabia, or, when the president of Argentina call
s to congratulate him on winning the election, asking the guy to clear up some stuck building permits for him in Buenos Aires.
Section 4 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to our Constitution provides to Vice President–elect Pence and Trump’s cabinet the means—if they have the ethics, the patriotism, and the stones to use it—to remove him from office basically as soon as the inauguration is over.
But of course, not only does section 4 not say anything about doctors or health or psychosis—it also doesn’t say anything about . . . corruption or ethics or disinterest.
It doesn’t say anything at all about why the president might be “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office”—it just talks about letters and declarations and twenty days and a two-thirds vote!
A Republican vice president and a Republican cabinet and a Republican Speaker of the House and a Republican president pro tempore of the Senate and a Republican House majority and a Republican Senate majority can just do it!
Because—they don’t trust him.
Because—they don’t like him.
Because—it’s Thursday!
But, even if you loathe or fear Trump, you must look at this and say, “This can’t happen in a democracy! The people voted for him! You can’t just un-president him!”
The hell you can’t.
How did Margaret Thatcher wind up becoming the ex–prime minister of the United Kingdom?
Lost the election?
No!
Decided to retire?
No!
Forced out by the votes of just 356 members of the House of Commons! From her own party. And she got the majority of those votes!
Three of Britain’s past five prime ministers became prime minister without first being elected!
Winston Churchill became their wartime prime minister in 1940—didn’t win an election for the job until 1951!
So don’t tell me this isn’t democratic!
Not only is there the English example, but, among other things—this is in our Constitution!
And on February 23 of next year, it will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary of being in our Constitution!
Here’s hoping we have a big birthday party that day.
And I have just the right theme for it!
And you know who bursts out of the Twenty-fifth Amendment birthday cake?
That’s right! Acting President Mike Pence!
MADNESS
Post date • MONDAY, NOVEMBER 28
More than thirty-six hours after Donald Trump revealed the full extent of his disconnect from reality—the jaw-dropping, terrifying moment in which the president-elect of the United States of America publicly stated that he still believes the election was rigged against him . . . even though he won it—and we still await the first serious, sober discussion in our nation’s media about the exact dimensions of, and the exact nature of, Mr. Trump’s desperate psychological impairment.
This has long since transcended politics.
This has long since transcended diversions from his corruption, or the FBI, or foreign interference.
This is not left versus right, nor liberal versus conservative, nor alt versus inclusive, nor any of the excuses newspapers and television made Sunday and Monday in hopes of preserving the political-media complex.
This is not funny, and this is not ego, and this is not “He speaks his mind.”
This . . . is an existential threat to the United States of America:
The president-elect, Donald Trump, is manifestly, profoundly, and dangerously psychologically imbalanced.
The sooner we acknowledge this, the greater chance we have of averting a disaster that could threaten the safety of every American—indeed, of everybody on this planet.
The sooner those around him acknowledge this, the greater chance they have of not being remembered by history—if there is a history to remember them—as enablers to a cataclysm in which the most powerful military arsenal in the history of the world was placed under the control of a man with no control over himself and his hair-trigger, childish, petulant, peevish, vengeful, hateful, poisonous temper.
The sooner those who plan to be in his government acknowledge this, the greater chance they have of summoning the support from all political quarters before it is too late to do anything constitutional about it. A Mike Pence presidential administration is far from the list of my one hundred preferred options, but right now I cling to it as the only realistic prospect of saving ourselves from an insane commander in chief.
A sane man does not, on a Wednesday, promulgate a video in which he claims it is his “prayer” that “we begin to heal our divisions and move forward as one country” and then, on a Saturday, insult the losing party as “badly defeated and demoralized.”
A sane man does not acknowledge the end of a “long and bruising political campaign,” and that “emotions are raw and tensions just don’t heal overnight,” and then three days later brand a fully legal recount—the right to which he reserved for himself not a month earlier—as a “scam,” and then a day after that insist that there was “serious voter fraud” in three states that “the media” isn’t reporting.
A sane man does not invoke Lincoln and “a great national campaign to rebuild our country” at one hour and then, seventy-two hours later, insist, “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”
These are not words of sanity!
These are the rages and the boasts and the madness that we have seen throughout history. Saddam Hussein. Mussolini. Fidel Castro. Mao Zedong. Stalin. Pol Pot. Bin Laden. Hitler.
If there are still doubts about what we face and how our hands are tied just a little more tightly every day—if there needs to be debate about how sick this man is, whether this is treatable neurosis or an illness brought on by a physical calamity or injury, or full-on malignant narcissism or paranoia or psycho- or sociopathy—so be it.
We may still have time for a national dialogue about exactly what is wrong with him.
But in pronouncing, after arguably the greatest upset in American electoral history, that he would have won by more because the vote he won was still rigged against him, Donald John Trump has made it inarguably certain that there is something desperately wrong with him and he is not psychologically fit to assume the presidency on January 20.
A REPLY TO TRUMP’S VIDEO
Post date • TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 29
It is more than a week now, and yet there is no reply.
Donald John Trump, the first-ever president-elect to begin to try to monetize the presidency and privatize the government and to fill his cabinet with the crew of a pirate ship . . .
Donald John Trump, the first-ever president-elect to insist that an election he won was still rigged against him . . .
Donald John Trump, the first-ever president-elect who is a classless guy’s idea of real classy . . .
Of course he delivers his first address to the nation . . . in a YouTube video.
And worse yet, there is . . . no reply.
As I said two weeks ago, I don’t want to be at the forefront of the resistance, but the rest of America’s commentators and almost all of its politicians are holding back—presumably owing to Oh, let’s give him a chance, another chance, his five thousandth chance, combined with their deep-seated fears of unemployment and unpaid mortgages.
So somebody has to do this.
And I’ll do it line by line.
The official resistance response to President-elect Pussygrabber’s Pettysburg Address. On YouTube.
“We are very blessed to call this nation our home. And that is what America is: it is our home. It’s where we raise our families, care for our loved ones, look out for our neighbors, and live out our dreams.”
I’m sorry—look out for our neighbors?
Our
Mexican neighbors? The ones you said are “bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists”?
Our African American neighbors? The ones you said are “living in poverty, your schools are no good, you have no jobs”?
And America, where you say we “live out your dreams”? America, which you said last August 27 is in a death spiral?
That America?
“It is my prayer that on this Thanksgiving, we begin to heal our divisions and move forward as one country, strengthened by a shared purpose and very, very common resolve.”
Divisions?
You were endorsed by the KKK, your election was celebrated at a neo-Nazi convention with shouts of “Hail Trump” and threats against the “Lügenpresse,” and you insisted for week after week after week that the election was rigged and that you were under no obligation to honor the outcome of the vote.
Divisions?
Three days after you recorded that, you were calling the Democrats—whose candidate got more votes than you did—“badly defeated and demoralized” . . .
But—go on, explain to me how we will begin to heal our divisions.
Which you personally caused.
“In declaring this national holiday, President Lincoln called upon Americans to speak with ‘one voice and one heart.’ That’s just what we have to do.”
Lincoln. Whose words at Gettysburg still inspire the nation 153 years after he spoke them. Gettysburg, where you spoke on October 22 and promised that you would sue all the women who had accused you of sexual assault.
Lincoln. Who led this country not into civil war, but out of one. Civil war started by the political ancestors of the white supremacists who helped to get you elected—by the political ancestors of your campaign chief, now chief White House strategist, who has a history of denigrating women, blacks, and Jews.
“One voice and one heart.”
Let me know, Mr. Trump, when you obtain a heart.
“We have just finished a long and bruising political campaign. Emotions are raw and tensions just don’t heal overnight.”
Trump Is F*cking Crazy (This Is Not a Joke) Page 15