Senator Warren said, “If senior administration officials think the President of the United States is not able to do his job, then they should invoke the 25th Amendment.” She makes it sound like it works like this:
(a) Invoke the 25th Amendment;
(b) Trump is out of office, permanently.
She also omits the possibility that the author could not be a part of the 25th Amendment process but still clearly be a senior administration official. Deputy Secretaries are pretty good examples. They don’t get a vote in the process, or much public attention, but are in some incredibly important positions within the executive branch.
I don’t think she implied it would work any differently then the amendment sets out. She just wants them to start the process. Where it leads, time will tell.
I guess my take on it is that if senior administration officials think the President of the United States is not able to do his job, then they should (attempt to bring Pence on side in order to) invoke the 25th Amendment. Because that’s what it’s there for.
Right, the 25th is designed more for emergency situations where the President suddenly loses his/her mind while in office. It’s actually harder than impeachment (which requires only a majority in the House), which is appropriate, since the impeachment process takes much longer and allows more time for deliberation. The 25th should be invoked only when there is no reasonable doubt that the President is incapable of fulfilling his duties. Or, perhaps more to the point, markedly less capable than he was when he was elected, which doesn’t seem to be the case here.
Senator Warren knows a lot more about politics than I do, and I’m positive that she knows a lot more about the 25th amendment than I do, so I’m not going to kindly explain jack shit to her.
I am no expert, but I was of the understanding that “impeachment” and “removal from office” are two different things with different processes. Nixon was impeached, but resigned before he could be removed from office (then pardoned by Ford). Bill Clinton was impeached, I think, but he remained in office.
Nixon was never impeached. He almost certainly would have been, and some members of the House were already writing up the articles, but he quit before they could get those articles passed.
I’m sure Senator Warren is well aware of how the process works, and is not so naive as to think that her words are going to lead someone in the Administration to say, “By golly, she’s nailed it! Why didn’t I think of that? To the meeting room, men, we have an amendment to invoke!”
It’s just political rhetoric. How many times have people dismissed ridiculous comments by Trump with some version of, “oh, never mind, he’s just playing to his base”? Seems to me that Warren is doing a more honorable version of the same thing. In the extraordinarily unlikely event that her commentary caused a twinge of conscience among White House officials, and they actually acted on that twinge (presumably by ending their hypocrisy through speaking out/resigning rather than an ill-fated attempt to use the 25th), that would just be gravy.
Only if you invoke a ridiculously unfair parsing of what she said. Invoke can simply mean call up or initiate. That is the likely meaning she is using here.
Don’t assume that impeachment and the 25th amendment would be voted on the same way by Congress. Remember who invokes each. Democrats would probably invoke impeachment, and Republicans would probably vote against it. The 25th on the other hand would be invoked by administration officials and I’d be surprised if many Republicans would be interested in second guessing Pence and other cabinet members.
This is my take on it. It’s one thing to say “Those Democratic Representatives just hate Trump!”, and yet another to say, “Those Republican Cabinet members who were all appointed by Trump just hate Trump!”
It’s not just the word “invoke”. The entire notion that “If senior administration officials think the President of the United States is not able to do his job, then they should invoke [or initiate] the 25th Amendment” implies that one follows from the other and ignores the huge obstacles in getting Trump removed from office via this means. If you think that initiating this process would provoke a huge uproar and make Trump go even further off the deep end than he is already but ultimately not lead to his removal from office, then it doesn’t follow from the fact that “senior administration officials think the President of the United States is not able to do his job” that “they should invoke [or initiate] the 25th Amendment”.
I think it’s reasonable to presume that Warren is implying that, if this is how most of Trump’s senior officials feel, then they would have the numbers to invoke the 25th amendment without worry of it being successfully challenged; and that they have not is a good indication that his senior officials mostly don’t feel this way.
I think it’s reasonable to assume that it was mostly a throw-away line or the verbal equivalent of a bumper sticker and it’s a mistake to read a bunch of nonsense into it.
Like adaher says, Dems would lead any impeachment attempt, and the GOP would dig in its heels against it.
But initiation of the 25th Amendment removal procedure would have to come from Pence and a majority of the Cabinet. Like the saying goes, the call would be coming from inside the house. There’s still no guarantee of success, but the politics would play out very differently.
The GOP Congressional caucus would have a choice between taking Pence & Co. seriously*, or declaring them persona non grata. In the latter case, Trump would fire most of his Cabinet, and most of the party, not to mention Fox News, would loudly call for Pence’s resignation.
*Not saying that this case would be guaranteed to result in Trump’s removal, just that they’d slow down, realize the gravity of the situation, and conduct themselves accordingly - like they were mature, reasoning human beings first, and Republicans second.