In all seriousness, no. I don’t think he needs that level of support/restraint. My mother had similar levels of dementia at the end of her life, and she did fine living at home with an aide. She was a nicer person, and also had no access to dangerous weapons.
But it’s long past time to exercise section 4 of the 25th amendment.
The POTUS has sole authority to launch a nuclear weapon.
Interestingly…interestingly because I don’t know if wiki always said this or added it since Trump has been in office, but it states that if the POTUS orders a nuclear attack, the only way to cancel it is to 25A him out of office so the VP can cancel it.
As Trump gets way too close to launching nuclear weapons, we’ll have to see if those with the power to remove him from office actually do that or they instead decide to put out Duck & Cover PSAs and start doing air raid drills.
Is it more important to them to kiss his ass or keep Americans, including themselves, safe? I know that sounds sarcastic, but turning a blind eye to all his scams and wars and problems he’s caused is on a whole different level than starting a nuclear war.
And, with that, a more serious question, if he were to launch a nuke, how likely is it that someone else will drop one on American soil?
This seems like a good thread to post this opinion piece, since it recommends using health reasons as a very believable face-saving reason for trump to resign from the Presidency.
Yes, Mr. President sir, if you want to preserve your legacy and be remembered as one of the best Presidents in history, you should resign now, citing health reasons, before all this messy war, scandal and inflation stuff really hits the fan-- that way the worst of it all will get blamed on Vance. Yeahhh, that’s the ticket!
I have to post it as a simple link since it’s not generating a preview tile:
Because the setup originated during the Cold War, when it was assumed that the decision to use them might need to be made in minutes as a suspected nuclear attack came in. And of course that the President would be mentally competent.
I expect the assumption back then would have been that somebody like Trump would never be elected, and that somebody so obvious mentally dysfunctional would have been long ago removed from office.
Yes, and beyond that, the codes are necessary, but not sufficient to launch the nukes. The codes are there to assure the chain of command that the President did in fact make the order, and no else issued the command without authorization. The chain of command is still supposed to consider in order to determine the details.
The actual scary part is that Trump has already replaced the chain of command with incompetent lickspittles.
PRESIDENT MUFFLEY: General Turgidson! When you instituted the human reliability tests, you *assured* me there was *no* possibility of such a thing *ever* occurring!
GENERAL TURGIDSON: Well, I, uh, don’t think it’s quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir.
In addition to the assumption a madman wouldn’t become president, the assumption was both the judicial and legislative branches would serve as a check against the powers of the executive. But as we’ve seen, many of the people serving in both the legislative and judicial branches have abrogated their responsibilities in favor of enabling Trump to rule by fiat. And let’s not forget the American people, many of whom decided to self-destruct despite knowing better.
Trump infamously hates reading a lot in reports and demands pictures, so you want to make sure it’s more of a photo book than anything else. Any text should be brief with small words.
Yup this is one of the many ways something that seemed like an effective check or balance on the executive branch was actually totally dependent on the people involved having some shred of decency and desire to put country ahead of party and self interest
As a carefully considered response to the US using a nuke on Iran, it’s unlikely.
As a very hurried descision in reaction to detection of a American nuclear missile being launched more so. There are a whole bunch of very hair-triggered cold war era mechanisms to enable nuclear powers to respond to a nuclear “first strike”.