Trump's team won't invoke the 25th Amendment. Here's a better way to stop him.
In Trump's first term, I participated in secret debates about the president's derangement and whether to invoke emergency powers. Only one scenario seemed viable.
Years ago, I revealed that Trump’s Cabinet discussed the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office during his first term. We ran the scenarios. And there was only one that made sense.
On Easter Sunday morning, as families gathered for church and children hunted for eggs, the president of the United States published an expletive-laden threat on social media promising to bomb Iran’s power plants and bridges.
Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut rightfully called the post “completely, utterly unhinged” and urged Trump’s Cabinet to spend the holiday “calling constitutional lawyers about the 25th Amendment.” Other Democrats echoed the sentiment. Even MAGA Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene — once among Trump’s most fervent loyalists — wrote that he “has gone insane” and called on those around him to “intervene in Trump’s madness.”
“Yes,” I wrote on social media. “He’s pledging war crimes. It’s time for the 25th.”
But it won’t happen. Ever.
In 2018, I disclosed that members of Donald Trump’s own cabinet had privately discussed invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment during his first term. What I described was not rumor or speculation. It was the lived reality of senior officials who had concluded, in private, that the president might be trending toward the type of unhinged conduct that could conceivably justify his removal. We weren’t there yet. But we could all see where his impulsive conduct and disconnection from reality was headed. It wasn’t good.
We judged that Trump was capable of getting us into an accidental nuclear conflict. I can’t think of more appropriate circumstances than that to invoke the Amendment. Yet those Cabinet members, almost to a person, chose not to act.
Why? The mechanics of that hesitation are worth revisiting.
By early 2018, the conversations were real and they were serious. Rod Rosenstein, then the deputy attorney general, had discussed not only wearing a wire in the Oval Office but invoking what officials in those days simply called “the Twenty-Fifth.” The White House chief of staff had quietly conducted an informal whip count of sorts among cabinet secretaries. The results were sobering and instructive.
As I wrote in Blowback:
“A number of cabinet members were prepared to take the vote in an extreme scenario, but no one thought it was a viable option at the moment. Trump would call it a coup. His supporters would violently take to the streets, and Congress would probably overturn the determination anyway.”
Let me explain. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment, as codified in 1967, allows the vice president and a majority of the heads of the fifteen executive departments to declare the president unfit and strip him of his powers, but Congress can reverse the determination within twenty-one days. Back then, a reversal was likely. It’s even more likely today. The GOP House and Senate would never cross this president so brazenly, regardless of the imminent mortal danger he might pose to the republic or how mentally impaired he might be.
Even if Trump’s Cabinet found the courage to do something, the constitutional clock would almost certainly run out in Trump’s favor. He’d come back into the job more vengeful than ever. Then officials would be rounded up, jailed, and killed in a bloody purge, the likes of which America has never seen.
But we had bigger reasons for not entertaining the idea (yes, bigger than our near-certain imprisonment or execution). We knew, with certainty, what Trump would do the moment the papers were signed. He’d go on television and declare that the Deep State had ousted him. He’d call it a coup. And his followers would believe him, no matter how serious the circumstances that led to his removal. They’d rise up violently against the government and thrust the United States into full-blown civil war.
The people who could’ve acted in the first term were, by any measure, a more independent group than what surrounds Trump today. Back then, the Defense Secretary resigned rather than execute orders he found immoral. The White House Chief of Staff was a four-star general with a soldier’s sense of duty. The DHS Secretary was a trained lawyer who’d authored the government’s emergency continuity plans. Justice Department leaders had served under multiple administrations with a respect for the rule of law. Nonetheless, they prudently declined to pull the constitutional ripcord.
Still, I expected in a second term it would get so much worse. He’d be more unhinged and would use the military in corrupt and contemptible ways. I predicted he’d deploy U.S. troops domestically, conduct extrajudicial killings of individuals he deemed “terrorists,” and start wars that could possibly spiral into globe-engulfing conflicts. Wouldn’t that be enough to stop him? I wondered aloud.
When I reflect on the nightmare scenario — of an American president hijacking the military for nefarious ends — I like to believe there are safety valves. That’s the type of moment when the Twenty-Fifth Amendment gets invoked, isn’t it? Surely the president’s cabinet would save the day by ejecting him from office... But I know better. [Trump’s next] cabinet will be stacked with loyalists.
Those forecasts have held up. Trump has become exactly as reckless as I anticipated. And his current Cabinet is not a check on the president’s worst instincts, by any measure. They’re an accelerant. They’ve egged him on as he seeks to bend the U.S. military to his personal will, rather than the national interest.
All of this to say, while it may be “time for the 25th,” in the most literal sense, that much-hyped constitutional amendment is not coming to save us. Which brings me to the only question that matters: What will?
In the first term, we ran every scenario of how to deal with Trump’s misconduct. Aside from simply speaking truth to power — and speaking out — every scenario designed to “check” Trump from within was fraught with constitutional and mortal peril. Our best hope, it seemed, was the system the founders have bequeathed us. The democratic process itself. The political opposition should be the countervailing force and work to usurp Trump’s power electorally.
And guess what? It worked. Trump got whipped in the midterms, and the balance of power shifted. His influence diminished. What’s more, the Democrats successfully used their bully pulpit in Congress to weaken Trump going into the 2020 election.
Have we forgotten?
I’ve spent years watching the democracy-protection community pour enormous energy into doomed constitutional off-ramps, including impeachment, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, criminal indictments, and more. Meanwhile, the actual political infrastructure that might deliver definitive accountability has gone underbuilt. Every moment that senators spend calling for a mechanism that requires Trump’s own cabinet to act against him is a moment not spent registering voters in Wisconsin, recruiting candidates in competitive House districts, or building the grassroots organization that’s the only thing that can reliably constrain a demagogue.
The midterm elections are coming. They’re the real emergency exit.
If we want Donald Trump’s power curtailed through actual oversight, subpoenas, and lasting accountability, then we need a Congress willing to exercise it. That means we must focus all of our energy on flipping the House and putting the Senate in play. It means building an organizing operation so large and so durable that it cannot be gerrymandered or suppressed or litigated away. What I call the “Too Big To Rig” coalition.
The Twenty-Fifth Amendment is a fantasy dressed up as democracy’s savior. Believe me. Our only hope — at least right now — is an election that smothers the MAGA movement. So let’s get to work.
Your friend, in defiance,
Miles, I never knew how the 25th worked until you explained it. Definitely gives one pause if he then has 21 days to wreek havoc on all who support it. What a chilling forecast. I do wonder how plausible an election is in November. The rat is getting cornered and he will be even more rabid then, nothing will be out of line. Blood shed is what he wants so very much... on our own soil.
Whatever it is...however it's done -- I DON'T CARE. It needs to happen.