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A majority of the citizens of the United States, along with many people around the world have been horrified at the immature, narcissistic and sociopathic behavior of Trump. While his supporters continue to bleat that he ‘tells it like it is’ and is ‘not a politician’, this is not a question of politics but instead what type of social behavior is acceptable and what is not. As Americans, we deserve to have leaders that represent maturity and wisdom in decision making and act on behalf of the people to benefit ourselves, the country and the planet. Instead, there is a man baby in the White House, whose daily antics is combined with inexperienced staff and an administration that individually hates the departments of which they have been assigned. There is a dark list of personality disorders that Trump is displaying and the world is looking on in horror. The rest of us are asking if it’s time to institute the 25th Amendment against a man that has demonstrated some rather serious mental conditions, before he destroys the country.

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What Is the 25th Amendment?

According to the Cornell Law description:

“The 25th Amendment, proposed by Congress and ratified by the states in the aftermath of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, provides the procedures for replacing the president or vice president in the event of death, removal, resignation, or incapacitation.”

Up until this point, the Constitution and the laws set in place didn’t have a ‘Plan B’ in the case of a sitting President’s illness, whether physical or mental. While Trump may officially hold this title, he is not accepted by many in the country and is being rejected by many of our allies due to his erratic behavior and rhetoric.

The 25th Amendment defines a clear line of succession and ConstitutionCenter.org assists in explaining this process:

“The original Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution dealt with these matters, reading, “In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.”

The 25th amendment gave detail and clarity to the first part of this paragraph and added an important feature that allowed the President and Congress to nominate and approved a new Vice President when that office became vacate during a presidential term. (The second part of the clause allows Congress to establish a line of succession if the President and Vice President aren’t in office and those offices are vacant.)”

In this conversation, the most important parts of the 25th Amendment are Sections 3 & 4: Disability of the President:

“Sections 3 and 4 deal with scenarios where the President may suffer a “inability” or “disability,” if you recall the wording of Article II, Section 1. Starting with George Washington, who had a serious health scare as President, there were cases where the chief executive may have been “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” In those cases, the 25th amendment’s Section 3 allows the President to tell Congress that the Vice President can act as President until he is able to resume work.

Section 4 is the most controversial part of the 25th amendment: It allows the Vice President and either the Cabinet, or a body approved “by law” formed by Congress, to jointly agree that “the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” In theory, this clause was designed to deal with a situation where an incapacitated President couldn’t tell Congress that the Vice President needed to act as President.

It also allows the President to protest such a decision, and for two-thirds of Congress to decide in the end if the President is unable to serve due to a condition perceived by the Vice President, and either the Cabinet or a body approved by Congress.”

Decisions Can Get Sticky

There is what is referred to as an ‘Achilles Heel’ within the 25th Amendment and this was tested during the time when the removal of Nixon was in place. Also explained in ConstitutionCenter.org:

“Yale scholar Akhil Reed Amar has written frequently on this subject as an Achilles Heel of the 25th amendment. “It provides no satisfactory mechanism for determining vice-presidential disability,” said Amar in a 2010 article. “Compounding the problem, if the Vice President ever were to be disabled (or if the vice presidency were at any point vacant) the Twenty-fifth Amendment’s elaborate machinery for determining presidential disability will seize up; much of the key decision making under this Amendment pivots on determinations that must be personally made by the Vice President.”

Nothing In Place to Determine Presidential Mental Stability

Trump, in his inflammatory personality, has exposed some of the serious loopholes of the office. There has never before been a situation where the mental stability of the individual holding the title has been in question and therefore, there are no laws requiring either mental or physical professional release. This man has spent a lifetime ‘working the system’ in business, exposing the weaknesses of the bankruptcy laws and using every trick in the book to move himself into his own twisted version of ‘success’ with used car salesman rhetoric. He has carried this attitude forward in the White House and as citizens, we are seeing the holes in all of their hideous visions.

In a Newsweek article, they address the tricky situation of the 25th Amendment, the laws and the question of mental instability:

“This {the 25th Amendment} assures continuity of government if the president falls victim to a sudden illness. But if the president recovers — or disputes the existence of a disability at all — he can attempt to reclaim his office by informing Congress. This will happen automatically, unless the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet provide a further declaration to Congress within four days that the president remains disabled.

If that happens, Congress must convene and make a high-stakes decision: Who is entitled to exercise the powers of the presidency, the president or the vice president?

But the president has a clear advantage in this contest: He will regain his powers unless the House and the Senate each confirm his disability by two-thirds majorities. To put it in the simplest terms, the support of either 34 senators or 145 members of the House would be sufficient to restore power to an allegedly disabled president.

In the case of physical disability, invocation of the Twenty-fifth Amendment is likely to be straightforward. In most cases, an inability to communicate will signal the president’s disability, and the restoration of communication will mark the end of it.

Mental disability is an entirely different kettle of fish. It is not necessary to argue that the president is “insane” in a legal or clinical sense — the constitutional standard is simply whether he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties” of the office.”

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Be Careful What You Ask For

In the same Newsweek article, they remind us that just removing Trump may not be enough and even if the topic comes up, it requires a lot more than just public request:

“What if a president “performs” his duties, but does so erratically and irrationally? And if the president loudly insists that he is capable, will the vice president and Cabinet dare invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment, even if they are privately convinced that he is not?

As long as he retains the loyalty of a substantial minority in either the House or Senate, the president can turn the tables on his scheming lieutenants and reclaim his office. Once restored to his powers, the president can (and certainly would) dismiss the Cabinet members who doubted his capacity.

While the vice president cannot be removed from office, he can be sidelined and humiliated in countless ways until his term is over. And that assumes the president would not seek even more extreme forms of vengeance.

Under these circumstances, the vice president and Cabinet may fear using the Twenty-fifth Amendment to constrain an unbalanced president until his madness has put the nation in serious peril. Is there any way out of this dilemma?”

In other words, it will require a majority of the House and Senate to agree on the removal and then the ‘line of succession’ can kick into gear. This would institute Pence into the position, if agreed upon by the House and Senate. Given that there is total Republican control of both, this may sound like an alternative, but Pence is both a polished politician and someone with a gravely conservative religious background that has no problem enforcing those radicalized Christian beliefs in bills and laws.

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RussiaGate Changes Everything:

As we are seeing the unfolding of RussiaGate, we are also witnessing the fact that almost everyone involved with Trump, including his own family members, is involved in one way or another with potentially treasonous actions.

Trump has had absolutely no problem assigning positions of authority to those that are now being linked with the activities of RussiaGate as well as surrounding himself with people that he thought would buffer him from accusation. However, one by one, each of these individuals are being investigated and many are falling to the wayside. They are proving that their interest for self-preservation goes beyond their ‘loyalty’ to Trump and it is anticipated that they will continue to throw him and each other ‘under the bus.’

Pence has made it part of his profession to be conveniently absent during some of the most critical RussiaGate accusations. This is a deliberate method to distance and portray himself as the ‘innocent’ in the process. But this is all just a ploy for the public.

In a Politicususa.com article quoting MSNBC reporter Rachel Maddow, she connects the dots on the Pence involvement in the RussiaGate scandal:

“Maddow said:

Mike Pence had been the head of the Trump transition. As such, he would have been intimately involved with the selection and vetting process for a job as important as national security adviser. Nevertheless, Vice President Mike Pence has professed absolute ignorance of any of the scandals of any of the foreign payments, contacts and all the rest of it surrounding Mike Flynn. Pence was the leader of the transition. As leader of the transition, he was notified in writing by members of Congress about Flynn’s apparent financial ties to the government of Turkey. The transition was also apparently notified twice by Flynn’s own lawyers about his financial relationship with the government of Turkey, but nevertheless, Vice President Mike Pence says he has no idea about any of that.

….

Vice President Mike Pence claims he had absolutely no idea about that despite him being notified about on the record multiple times and it being a matter of considerable public discussion. Mike Pence’s role in the Mike Flynn scandal is flashing like a red beacon for anyone who sees him as the normal Republican in this setting.”

There are many that make the assumption that Pence knew what he was getting into when he agreed to run as Vice President under the Republican ticket. He was cognizant of the idiocy of Trump, the connections with Russia and the potential that it wouldn’t take long for Trump to undermine himself. Others have speculated that his inside knowledge led to reassurances by his fellow Republicans that they would support him as a replacement once Trump accomplished his own personal ‘melt down’.

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So What Now?

The full investigation of RussiaGate will expose more than Pence and the various members of the Republican Party want. This goes deeper than just hacking into various governmental databases. It involves an in-depth and longer term agreement to combine various elements of espionage, personal agreements with government representatives that are considered to be hostile to the U.S. and working with the Russian government to allow voter hacking.

We are at a critical point in our Democratic experiment to expose the incredible volume of people that were willing to sell their own country and the American people out. Our governing bodies are currently imbalanced, leaving us with a ruling authority that seems as though it will support the wrong doings to preserve their power.

We will have to allow the RussiaGate investigations to continue, exposing all of the players. It will be at that point that the people will need to rise up and demand that the 25th Amendment be invoked which will only consider those individuals that have been proven to have absolutely no involvement in the scandal.

For anyone that experienced Watergate, they will know that the situation involved an internal breach only. Although bad, during that time it was something that led the country to have doubt in leadership and shook the country to its core. RussiaGate is entirely different and the outcome of the investigations may prove to expose the dirty underbelly of the entire Republican Party.

The founding fathers knew that there needed to be a balance of power to make the best decisions for the country. They specifically abhorred any policies that involved religion and sought to establish better laws that would benefit the people. RussiaGate is an atrocity and whether we will have the ability to invoke the 25th Amendment or may simply be forced to watch the country fall to the wayside, is dependent upon how deep the treasonous actions go.

We are currently seeing a massive ‘divide’ in the country. The election of Trump has opened up the floodgates for the hate, anger and violence that has been boiling underneath for many years and many generations. If the results of RussiaGate enter into exposure of the Republican Party members that currently hold power, we may be on the brink of a civil war. If you are in doubt of this, you need to view the videos presented by the NRA that is encouraging conservatives to ‘kill liberals’. Their conspiracy theories and outright lies are a baseline to incite those that have been following the brainwashing techniques devoted to stations such as Fox and sources like Breitbart, to follow through on destroying individuals that they see as their ‘enemies’.

We are on the brink of either a disaster or a massive learning process that will institute change such as we have never before experienced. Watching this unfold is one of the most painful experiences that we have ever had. We hope that we can survive it.