Bob Woodward’s book shows that the administration is broken, yet what comes next could be worse.

Woodward writes that then–National-Security Adviser H. R. McMaster “believed Mattis and [then–Secretary of State Rex] Tillerson had concluded that the president and the White House were crazy. As a result, they sought to implement and even formulate policy on their own without interference or involvement from McMaster, let alone the president.” McMaster worked by a different protocol, drilled into him by the military, which holds civilian rule as sacrosanct: He often disagreed with the president and fought hard for his own views, but once Trump had made up his mind, it was McMaster’s job to execute his orders.

There is at least one historical occasion on which previous Cabinet members were ready to sabotage a president this way. Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, worried by Richard Nixon’s heavy drinking, instructed generals not to launch any strikes without his say-so—effectively granting himself veto power over the president. There’s no evidence he ever actually used that veto, though.

The scale of the apparent resistance to Trump is much grander than Schlesinger’s fail-safe—even if it’s limited only to what we already know, which seems unlikely. While the president has railed against a “deep state” of liberal bureaucrats throttling his administration, the reality is much stranger: The saboteurs are the president’s own appointees and close aides.

Apologists for figures like Mattis and Chief of Staff John Kelly have argued that whatever compromises they make by being in the administration, they are serving and protecting their country best by remaining in office and acting as a check on the president. Insofar as they are able to talk the president out of his worst impulses, that might be convincing. But if checking the president requires disobeying orders and acts of deception, it becomes harder to defend.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders blasted the op-ed in a statement, saying, “The individual behind this piece has chosen to deceive, rather than support, the duly elected president of the United States. He is not putting country first, but putting himself and his ego ahead of the will of the American people. This coward should do the right thing and resign.”

Say what you will about the wisdom of voters, but it is the bedrock of the nation, and Trump is the duly elected president, as Sanders says. Cabinet members are at least confirmed by the Senate, but they’re still unelected. Officials like Cohn and Porter are subject to even less scrutiny, as they are appointed directly to their posts. If protecting the rules requires tearing down the rules, what is there to be gained?

Recognizing the bind that top officials serving an unfit president could face, the nation in 1967 amended the Constitution to provide for the removal of a president who “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” The Twenty-Fifth Amendment creates a lawful path for a top government official who believes the president cannot serve: Work to remove him, rather than disobey legal orders.