The U.S. Constitution’s 25th Amendment allows for the removal of a president if he is deemed unfit for the office.
The bar is set extraordinarily high.
The amendment is now on the lips of Washington, D.C. officials who seem to think Donald J. Trump has gone around the bend.
Let’s hold on here!
I’ve already stated my concern over what I call “armchair diagnoses.” There’s been a lot of that going on these days as the president keeps firing off those tweets boasting about the size of his nuclear button and threatening North Korea with annihilation.
However, no psychiatrist has examined the president — at least that I am aware of — and offered a firm medical diagnosis.
Which begs a question. What would a president have to do to be tossed aside?
I guess a president would have to slap a kid who’s touring the White House. Perhaps he would have to drool all over himself. Maybe he would have to berate a senior White House adviser publicly, using what my dear old Dad used to call “the functional four-letter word.”
Donald Trump hasn’t done anything like that.
There well might be a political reason to remove the president. That is where impeachment comes into play.
The 25th Amendment, though, remains the remotest of possibilities — even for a president who acts as squirrely as this one.