While the Trump administration works to deliver new and innovative tax plans to benefit working and middle-class families, deal with North Korea, and curb the influx of radical Islamic terrorists posing as refugees, the left is looking for increasingly strange and perverse ways to try to get Donald Trump out of office.
Until recently, the prevailing tactic has been to push the that Donald Trump is some kind of Russian double agent working to subvert the American way and build a lot of Russo-themed skyscrapers in South Jersey. But now they have another approach in mind.
It isn’t new, but it seems like it’s all they have left after the Trump-Russia narrative fell to pieces: leveraging the 25th Amendment to try to oust the president under the pretense that he is mentally ill.
The language found within the 25th Amendment they are turning to reads:
“… 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…”
It continues:
“Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.”
What the Democrats behind this move do not seem to understand is that the 25th Amendment says nothing about removing the president from office because he is mentally ill. It is there to allow the president himself to declare that he is temporarily unable to fulfill his responsibilities. It also states that he may compel the vice president to undertake the duties of the office of the president until he declares that he is fit to return to his duties.
At the time the president opts to return to office, Congress may take his condition into account and cast a vote as to whether or not he should be allowed to return.
There is absolutely nothing in the language of the 25th Amendment indicating that members of the opposing party can call on a bunch of mercenary psychologists to forcibly remove the president from office. But good luck explaining that to the Democrats.
The proposal to create a panel which Democrats have convinced themselves could remove Trump from office under the auspices of the 24th was tabled in the House earlier this month. This came as a response to a series of tweets from the president concerning a discussion on a Fox News morning talk show.
Basing a proposed mental health deficiency of a man who was coherent enough to run a successful presidential campaign on a few tweets and about an hour of television programming, isn’t just reaching – it’s crazy. Not only would it require Trump himself to admit that he is unable to do his job – he would have to get Vice President Pence to sign off on it.
Furthermore, the entire tone and direction of the 25th Amendment is temporary in nature. It was signed into law to allow the president the ability to take a needed leave of absence for health or personal reasons. It is not there to function as a check on the power of the president – this is what the other two branches of the federal government are for.
The 25th Amendment exists as an acknowledgment of the fact that even the leader of the free world is only a human being with frailties and may, in some rare cases, require a period of relief from his duties.
Few presidents have ever taken advantage of the freedom given them by the 25th Amendment, because it would afford the opposition party time to mount a coup within the Congress to prevent him from returning to the White House. The fact that Congress can prevent the president’s return to office is evidence that it is the power of this privilege that is checked, and that it is not a check on the power of the president itself.
But Democrats will have to try and fail in order to learn this basic point of Constitutional law.
~ Conservative Zone
