In the past week, three respected Republican senators and the last GOP president have torn into President Donald Trump, directly and indirectly, for their fellow Republican’s indecorous behavior and his contempt for democratic norms. Because of Trump’s Twitter-delivered saber-rattling with cornered outcast North Korea, an August poll showed more than 80 percent of Americans were worried about nuclear war — far higher than in pre-Trump polls. This explains why there’s a huge surge of interest in bomb shelters in the United States and in ready-to-eat meals and gold bars in South Korea.

So what happens from here? Two Californians — billionaire aspiring politician Tom Steyer and half-billionaire smut peddler Larry Flynt — want to impeach him. Steyer is funding a $10 million campaign toward that end that’s running TV commercials in all 50 states. Flynt is offering $10 million for dirt that’s bad enough it could lead to impeachment.

But there’s been at least as much chatter of late from Trump’s harshest critics that he could be removed from office under the 25th Amendment, which allows the president’s Cabinet to take steps to remove a commander-in-chief who is unfit. In May, it seemed novel when conservative columnist Ross Douthat wrote in The New York Times that the 25th Amendment should be invoked because “leaving a man this witless and unmastered in an office with these powers and responsibilities is an act of gross negligence.”

Five months later, the notion of using the 25th Amendment to remove the sitting president no longer seems novel. An Oct. 11 Vanity Fair report made this seem a very real possibility:


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.” ...

Even before Corker’s remarks, some West Wing advisers were worried that Trump’s behavior could cause the Cabinet to take extraordinary constitutional measures to remove him from office. Several months ago, according to two sources with knowledge of the conversation, former chief strategist Steve Bannon told Trump that the risk to his presidency wasn’t impeachment, but the 25th Amendment — the provision by which a majority of the Cabinet can vote to remove the president.

On Oct. 18, writing on NBC News’ website, Richard Painter and Leanne Watt — an expert in presidential ethics and a clinical psychologist, respectively — argued that it was perfectly appropriate to use the 25th Amendment to remove a president who showed evidence of mental illness. Appearing on MSNBC that same day, Painter went further and said not only was it an appropriate response, Trump had it coming:

I believe it is time to act. And the 25th Amendment we should remember was adopted in 1967 in the nuclear age when we were well aware of the enormous risk to the United States and human civilization, of having a mentally unstable person in the presidency in control of nuclear weapons. And we make a mistake here, and that could mean the death of millions of people or indeed the destruction of human civilization. ...


President Trump has demonstrated that he has several serious disorders [including] extreme narcissism. He focuses only on himself, his own battles in life. He described his sex life as his own personal Vietnam. He more recently is obsessed with his fight with the NFL. ... And now we see the fallen soldier’s family treated like dirt. And I guess that’s OK to treat a fallen soldier’s family like dirt so long as we stand for the national anthem at a football game.

These comments go on and on. And we see each week new comments. But it’s the same old story. President Trump is not fit psychologically for office.

Painter’s view isn’t unusual. The possibility that the 25th Amendment might be used has captured the imagination of some in the media. A search of the Nexis news database shows more than 400 items citing the amendment over the past month, including 26 mentions in CNN transcripts, up significantly from previous months.

But is it truly a realistic possibility? Unless Trump actually starts a nuclear war, no, it is not — and for two obvious reasons.


The first is the easy way that Trump could make it extremely difficult for his Cabinet to force him out. Last week, writing in The Washington Post, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley laid out the labyrinth that is Section 4 of the 25th Amendment. He wrote that it essentially has ...

... two avenues for dragging a president from the Oval Office. First, there is the mutiny option. A vice president and a majority of the Cabinet can agree that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” and notify Congress that the vice president intends to take over. If Vice President Pence could get eight Cabinet officers to sign a letter to that effect, he would immediately become the “acting president.” But if the president then declares to Congress that “no inability exists,” Trump could resume his powers.

Pence and the rebellious Cabinet would then have to send another declaration within four days to the president pro tempore of the Senate and the speaker of the House that says, more or less, “don’t believe a word, he’s unfit.” Once Congress had the second declaration, if not already in session, it would have 48 hours to assemble to debate the issue. It would then have 21 days to vote on the president’s fitness. To remove the president, two-thirds of both houses would have to agree. If Congress did not vote within 21 days, the president would get his power back.

As Turley suggests, these hurdles are extraordinary. But they become impossible when one realizes that Trump can immediately fire anyone in his Cabinet who shows the slightest interest in giving him the boot. There’s something of a precedent: In 1973’s Saturday Night Massacre, President Richard Nixon kept pressuring attorneys general until he found one willing to dismiss special prosecutor Archibald Cox. The first — Elliott Richardson — resigned rather than carry out the order. Then acting Attorney General William Ruckelshaus also quit, though the White House claimed he had been fired.


Yet there is a second reason why a Republican vice president, a Republican Cabinet and a majority Republican Congress will never give the boot to this Republican president: He’s far more popular among Republicans than they are. A CNN poll released last month showed 79 percent of GOP members believe Trump is taking the party in the right direction and that 53 percent believe their congressional leaders are taking the party in the wrong direction. A Politico/Morning Consult survey released last week showed Republicans saw themselves as far more in sync with Trump than with Republican lawmakers.

An alien abduction is more likely to remove Trump from office than the 25th Amendment — once again, barring nuclear war. Unless we see mushroom clouds, talk of a Cabinet coup is cuckoo.

Reed, who does not like Cocoa Puffs, can be reached via email at chris.reed@sduniontribune.com. Twitter: @chrisreed99. To see his column archive, go here.



Twitter: @sdutIdeas

Facebook: San Diego Union-Tribune Ideas & Opinion

UPDATES:

A factual error was corrected and a sentence was clarified at 10 a.m. Oct. 30. Attorney General Elliott Richardson resigned in 1973 during the Watergate scandal. He wasn’t fired. There is a dispute over whether Richardson’s successor as acting attorney general, William Ruckelshaus, was fired or quit.