Good morning Austin:

Yesterday, in the dark of night, out on Second Street, in front of the Corner Restaurant and Bar at the JW Marriott Hotel, Alex Jones and Roger Stone made a 15-minute video in which they warned that there will be a bipartisan move to remove President Donald Trump from office under the 25th Amendment to the Constitution claiming that he is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

Here is Stone:

First of all, a disclaimer. They are going to say this is a “conspiracy theory,” but it is the Stone Cold Truth.

They are going to claim that Donald Trump has Alzheimer’s and that it is progressive and that is the source of his insanity.

I have talked to the president fairly recently. He is as sharp as a tack. There is no evidence of any deterioration in his thought process. This is completely bogus, but under the 25th Amendment, if a majority of the Cabinet, plus the vice president, agree that the president is incapacitated, well then, he is removed, and if he seeks to fight the charges, it goes to the U.S. House of Representatives where erosion among Republicans could destroy the Trump presidency.

Here is the full video.

[youtube=]

I will further break down what Stone and Jones had to say below, but first a little background about why I find this report worth paying attention to.

Alex Jones may or may not have a close relationship with Donald Trump, though, as he recently related, President-elect Trump did call him on his honeymoon with his second wife.

[youtube=]

But Roger Stone’s relationship with Trump is, in the political sphere, as close and enduring as anyone on the planet, and, it just so happened, I watched last night’s Stone-Jones video after watching the sensational new Netflix documentary, Get Me Roger Stone, which, with testimony from Donald Trump on down, makes plain that no one, save Trump himself, deserves more credit for the fact that Tump is president than Roger Stone, who had been plotting Trump’s political ascension for decades.

[youtube=]

Also, talk of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump has been in vogue of late, and is certain to blow up in the aftermath of yesterday’s story from Greg Miller and Greg Jaffe in the Washington Post: Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian foreign minister and ambassador.

From the New York Times’ Ross Douthat on Sunday:

Childish behavior can still lead to abuses of power, of which the Comey firing will not be the last. But liberals need to accept that the strongest case for removing Trump from office is likely to remain a 25th Amendment case: not high crimes and misdemeanors, not collusion with the Russians, but a basic mental unfitness for the office that manifests itself in made-for-TV crises and self-inflicted wounds.

And since a 25th Amendment solution would require Republican leaders, beginning with Mike Pence, to not only go along with his removal but take the lead in instigating it, it’s about as realistic as was the idea that those same leaders would somehow intervene against Trump at the Republican convention. Pence, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell — these men made their peace with Trump’s unfitness long ago. It will take more than further proof of that unfitness to make them move against him now.

Here is the 25th Amendment:

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.

From Vox:

The amendment states that if, for whatever reason, the vice president and a majority of sitting Cabinet secretaries decide that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” they can simply put that down in writing and send it to two people — the speaker of the House and the Senate’s president pro tem.

Then the vice president would immediately become “Acting President,” and take over all the president’s powers. Let that sink in — one vice president and any eight Cabinet officers can, theoretically, decide to knock the president out of power at any time.

If the president wants to dispute this move, he can, but then it would be up to Congress to settle the matter with a vote. A two-thirds majority in both houses would be necessary to keep the vice president in charge. If that threshold isn’t reached, the president would regain his powers.

Section 4 of the 25th Amendment has never been invoked in reality, though it’s a staple of thriller fiction. But there’s been a sudden surge of interest in it in recent months, as reports of Donald Trump’s bizarre behavior behind closed doors havebeenpilingup, and there is increasinglyunsubtlespeculation in Washington about the health of the president’s mind.

Whatever the current circumstances, an enormous amount rests on any president of the United States’ physical and mental health. The 25th Amendment exists as a failsafe that can be used if any president truly does appear to be unwell — as long as the people involved have the courage to actually go through with it, and the competence to carry it out without causing an even greater disaster.

And then this from Evan Osnos in the May 8 New Yorker, How Trump Could Get Fired. The Constitution offers two main paths for removing a President from office. How feasible are they?

Mental-health professionals have largely kept out of politics since 1964, when the magazine Fact asked psychiatrists if they thought Barry Goldwater was psychologically fit to be President. More than a thousand said that he wasn’t, calling him “warped,” “impulsive,” and a “paranoid schizophrenic.” Goldwater sued for libel, successfully, and, in 1973, the American Psychiatric Association added to its code of ethics the so-called “Goldwater rule,” which forbade making a diagnosis without an in-person examination and without receiving permission to discuss the findings publicly. Professional associations for psychologists, social workers, and others followed suit. With regard to Trump, however, the rule has been broken repeatedly. More than fifty thousand mental-health professionals have signed a petition stating that Trump is “too seriously mentally ill to perform the duties of president and should be removed” under the Twenty-fifth Amendment.

Lance Dodes, a retired assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, believes that, in this instance, the Goldwater rule is outweighed by another ethical commitment: a “duty to warn” others when he assesses that a person might harm them. Dodes told me, “Trump is going to face challenges from people who are not going to bend to his will. If you have a President who takes it as a personal attack on him, which he does, and flies into a paranoid rage, that’s how you start a war.”

Like many of his colleagues, Dodes speculates that Trump fits the description of someone with malignant narcissism, which is characterized by grandiosity, a need for admiration, sadism, and a tendency toward unrealistic fantasies. On February 13th, in a letter to the Times, Dodes and thirty-four other mental-health professionals wrote, “We fear that too much is at stake to be silent any longer.” In response, Allen Frances, a professor emeritus at Duke University Medical College, who wrote the section on narcissistic personality disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—IV, sought to discourage the public diagnoses. Frances wrote, “He may be a world-class narcissist, but this doesn’t make him mentally ill, because he does not suffer from the distress and impairment required to diagnose mental disorder. . . . The antidote to a dystopic Trumpean dark age is political, not psychological.”

To some mental-health professionals, the debate over diagnoses and the Goldwater rule distracts from a larger point. “This issue is not whether Donald Trump is mentally ill but whether he’s dangerous,” James Gilligan, a professor of psychiatry at New York University, told attendees at a recent public meeting at Yale School of Medicine on the topic of Trump’s mental health. “He publicly boasts of violence and has threatened violence. He has urged followers to beat up protesters. He approves of torture. He has boasted of his ability to commit and get away with sexual assault,” Gilligan said.

Bruce Blair, a research scholar at the Program on Science and Global Security, at Princeton, told me that if Trump were an officer in the Air Force, with any connection to nuclear weapons, he would need to pass the Personnel Reliability Program, which includes thirty-seven questions about financial history, emotional volatility, and physical health. (Question No. 28: Do you often lose your temper?) “There’s no doubt in my mind that Trump would never pass muster,” Blair, who was a ballistic-missile launch-control officer in the Army, told me. “Any of us that had our hands anywhere near nuclear weapons had to pass the system. If you were having any arguments, or were in financial trouble, that was a problem. For all we know, Trump is on the brink of that, but the President is exempt from everything.”

In the months since Trump took office, several members of Congress have cited concern about his mental health as a reason to change the law. In early April, Representative Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and a professor of constitutional law at American University, and twenty co-sponsors introduced a bill that would expand the authority of medical personnel and former senior officials to assess the mental fitness of a President. The bill has no chance of coming up for a vote anytime soon, but its sponsors believe that they have a constitutional duty to convene a body to assess Trump’s health. Representative Earl Blumenauer, of Oregon, introduced a similar bill, which would also give former Presidents and Vice-Presidents a voice in evaluating a President’s mental stability. Of Trump, he said, “The serial repetition of proven falsehoods—Is this an act? Is this a tactic? Is he just wired weird? It raises the question in my mind about the nature of Presidential disability.”

Over the years, the use, or misuse, of the Twenty-fifth Amendment has been irresistible to novelists and screenwriters, but political observers dismiss the idea. Jeff Greenfield, of CNN, has described the notion that Trump could be ousted on the basis of mental health as a “liberal fantasy.” Not everyone agrees. Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard, told me, “I believe that invoking Section 4 of the Twenty-fifth Amendment is no fantasy but an entirely plausible tool—not immediately, but well before 2020.” In Tribe’s interpretation, the standard of the amendment is not “a medical or otherwise technical one but is one resting on a commonsense understanding of what it means for a President to be ‘unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office’—an inability that can obviously be manifested by gross and pathological inattention or indifference to, or failure to understand, the limits of those powers or the mandatory nature of those duties.”

As an example of “pathological inattention,” Tribe noted that, on April 11th, days after North Korea launched a missile, Trump described an aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Carl Vinson, as part of an “armada” advancing on North Korea, even though the ship was sailing away from North Korea at the time. Moreover, Tribe said, Trump’s language borders on incapacity. Asked recently why he reversed a pledge to brand China a currency manipulator, Trump said, of President Xi Jinping, “No. 1, he’s not, since my time. You know, very specific formula. You would think it’s like generalities, it’s not. They have—they’ve actually—their currency’s gone up. So it’s a very, very specific formula.”

Lawrence C. Mohr, who became a White House physician in 1987 and remained in the job until 1993, came to believe that Presidential disability must be understood to encompass “very subtle manifestations” that might impair the President’s capacity to do the job. A President should be evaluated for “alertness, cognitive function, judgment, appropriate behavior, the ability to choose among options and the ability to communicate clearly,” Mohr told a researcher in 2010. “If any of these are impaired, it is my opinion that the powers of the President should be transferred to the Vice-President until the impairment resolves.”

In practice, however, unless the President were unconscious, the public could see the use of the amendment as a constitutional coup. Measuring deterioration over time would be difficult in Trump’s case, given that his “judgment” and “ability to communicate clearly” were, in the view of many Americans, impaired before he took office. For those reasons, Robert Gilbert, the Presidential-health specialist, told me, “If the statements get too strange, then the Vice-President might be able to do something. But if the President is just being himself—talking in the same way that he talked during the campaign—then the Vice-President and the Cabinet would find it very difficult.”

With that as background, let’s return to what Jones and Stone, who is in Austin through Wednesday and appeared in person Jones’ show Infowars. Stone makes frequent appearances on Infowars, usually remotely, but he was in Austin for most of a week during Jones’ recent child custody trial and did some filling in for him them.

He has described Jones and his vast audience as “Trump’s secret weapon” in the 2016 election.

Here they are on the corner of Second and Congress, Alex Jones amid passing cars, pedestrians, a bicycle, and one shouted epithet from a passing car.

AJ:

Alex Jones here on a Monday night with breaking intel. We’ve been researching this for a while. We have our sources inside the Pentagon, inside the CIA, inside the White House. I’m here with Roger Stone right now.

We’re working late into the evening on this situation because it’s so fast-moving. You’ve seen McMaster come out and say there were no leaks inside the Russian meeting with Trump when he’s probably the leaker, and we broke that down earlier in another video.

[youtube=]

[youtube=]

You’ve got the entire deep state that’s hijacked America panicking that the American people actually elected somebody who is trying to be president.

Now we knew about this three months ago when I broke the story of the planning, or pushing a COG (Continuity of Government) program to use the deep state to overthrow the president. That’s now admitted. The New Yorker magazine and others are saying that they now have members of the House, the Senate, Republicans, Democrats and members of Trump’s inner circle and Cabinet saying he’s mentally ill and under the 25th Amendment, they want to remove him from office.

What is he is stalwart, strong, on point, $3 trillion in the stock market, $300 million in new jobs and killing TPP and a conservative on the Supreme Court. He’s bad because he won’t roll over. He’s “mentally ill” because he won’t be influenced by a bunch of traitors and followers, because he’s a leader.

Is he perfect? Hell no. I mean I do a good job 60, 70 percent of the time. Trump is 90 percent of the time. So this is an amazing time to be alive. Roger Stone has talked to his sources, he concurs with my analysis, and he has the sources, that Trump is in great danger of overthrow right now, and they’re moving forward on many fronts right now. So here is the plan to overthrow the president, by the globalists, in a bipartisan act of treason.

Roger Stone.

RS:

First of all, a disclaimer. They are going to say this is a “conspiracy theory,” but it is the Stone Cold Truth.

They are going to claim that Donald Trump has Alzheimer’s and that it is progressive and that is the source of his insanity.

I have talked to the president fairly recently. He is as sharp as a tack. There is no evidence of any deterioration in his thought process. This is completely bogus, but under the 25th Amendment, if a majority of the Cabinet, plus the vice president, agree that the president is incapacitated, well then, he is removed, and if he seeks to fight the charges, it goes to the U.S. House of Representatives where erosion among Republicans could destroy the Trump presidency.

That’s bogus. They could not beat him at the ballot box. So now they seek to remove him by claiming that he’s insane.

Look at his record on the economy. Look at his appointment to the Supreme Court. Look at the way he has the Chinese doing our dirty work in North Korea and you’ll see he’s not crazy, he’s a genius.

AJ:

If that’s insane, we need more of it.

RS:

But this is the game plan. Watch carefully. You are going to see the word Alzheimer’s more and more in the next several days. I’ve even been tipped off by leftists about this, that this is the game plan. You heard it first at Infowars.com.

AJ:

To be clear, we’ve seen the spin. Oh, 200 psychologists or psychiatrists say he’s crazy, violating the Goldwater rule, which we can talk about in a minute for history. The guy who woke me even though he was retired by the time I read it. Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.

They know their psychiatry’s been discredited by all their political activity. And so now they’re shifting to “Oh, the Alzheimer’s,” even though Trump’s climbing up hills, playing gold, super smart, working 20 hours a day, has more stamina than I have at 43. They are still going to try to sell this hoax. Well people say, “but we won’t buy into it.” It doesn’t matter. The are so crazed, they are so scared.

Speak to that, and why is the elite so obsessed and so crazed, wanting to take Trump down?

He’s not perfect. I love to criticize him. I mean I’m not wedded to Trump. But the enemies of America, the globalists, hate him, like he’s high noon to vampires. Why?

RS:

Because for 30 years the two-power duopoly, the Bushes, the Clintons and the Obamas, they’re not going to relinquish power easily.

Even today, inside the Trump administration, 80 percent of the people employed at the highest levels of government, were appointed by and are loyal to Barack Obama. that’s largely because the president’s chief of staff has not been able to build a government by telling the Cabinet officers, half of whom I believe are disloyal to this president, who they must hire.

So you have situation in which you have the idea that 200 psychiatrists, who have never examined the president, and therefore no opinion they have would be valid, that didn’t work, so now we are going to claim that he has the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s.

Folks, it’s a fraud. They want to remove Donald Trump because he cannot be bullied, and he cannot be bought.

AJ:

And they call that mental, they call that mental illness. Not being bullied. And people that are anti-establishment, they still buy into this in some giant hoax, brainwashed program.

What can we as the people do to expose the Republican establishment, to expose the Democratic establishment?

RS:

They have made a giant mistake. They have pushed Donald Trump too far. And you push Donald Trump into a corner and you are going to get a snarling tiger.

This guy is a fighter and he has give up a fabulous lifestyle. He has sacrificed a great deal to take this job. He is separated from his family. He is living in Washington when he prefers New York. He has given up his golf game by and large. He is putting in hours I never expected, and I’ve known him for 40 years. He is resilient, he is tough, he is optimistic,

Crazy? No, he’s not crazy. He’s resolved. He is resolved to make this country great again and these attacks on him, in all honesty, will make him stronger, and more resilient.

RS:

I think McMaster is fingered as the leaker He was on his way out. This was a desperate attempt to save his job, but I think the president will see through it.

AJ:

The Cucks. They’re making jokes about the media attacking me and my family, stuff that was three years old. I’m remarried. I have more children. I’m happier than ever. My original children are awesome.

We’re winning, winning. My audience under the globalist attack, it took 20 years to get to 40 million a week, and now it’s like 60, 70 million a week, but see the attack on Infowars is for cucks, cowards and fools, to see us getting attacked by MSM, they think, “Oh my God, if I”m for freedom, if I’m for America and I’m for Second Amendment, I’m for private property, I’ll get attacked.”

The attack only makes me bigger. I live in a real universe. The enemy knows that. They do it to make you feel like a loser if you join us in victory, so it’s a Psy Op on you. Do you understand? We’ve gotten bigger and stronger under the attack.

We’ve got big professional studios, giant cameras, all the crap, we’re doing this real because that’s what awake people do, and our awake audience, goes, “Alex, why do you talk to the cucks, why do you talk the zombies, why do you talk to the folks who are in their mom’s basements?” Because they’re the prodigal sons. Read that parable. I care about them as I care about you. You’re already awake. We love you even more. I’m with you. We’re brothers, we’re sisters. but it is the little pathetic cucks we’ve got to reach out to and show them they’ve been lied to.

RS- They can’t get over the fact that there’s a new sheriff in town and his name is Donald Trump.

RS:

Victory or Death.

AJ:

Victory or death, as Col. Travis said.

We’ll see how this unfolds, but Morning Joe this morning sounded like they were preparing for the intervention, that President Trump’s revealing top secret information while yukking it up with the Russians the day after he fired FBI Director James Comey was the final proof that the president was of a dangerously unsound mind.

“Here’s the problem,” said Joe Scarborough. “The arc of this narrative keeps getting worse. People on the inside say he keeps getting worse. and mentally keeps getting worse.”

“This is a man in decline.”

“This is a man who cannot be stopped,” said co-host Mika Brzezinski. “He is not well.”

“It’s like he’s driving a runaway train and the American people are the passengers.”

.