Both Trump and Pence get deathly ill and pass away in rapid order of each other. Assume both are incapacitated before dying.
What can the Republicans do to keep Pelosi from becoming President? I think she becomes President even when Trump and Pence are incapacitaed. And i’m pretty sure there are no provisions for:
Trump: “Uggggh I’m very sick, if me and Pence are incapacitated or die without appointing a replacement I hereby appoint …uhhh…fuck…uhhh…Ivanka? as President. Or VP. Whatever.”
Another Q, and this isnt terribly implausible. Both Trump and Biden, after being nominated, die or are terribly incapacitated befoire the election…who do you think the RNC and DNC would nominate? I assume Pence…but who would be the DNC choice?
I’d assume they’d have VPs by the time of nomination.
If Biden dies before picking a VP, I’m not sure who picks the next nominee. I’d guess it would be klobuchar or Buttigieg. They aren’t picking Sanders sadly, so they’ll pick a tertiary level nominee.
I think it depends on what the term “qualifies” means. I am assuming it means that once Congress approves a replacement Vice-President as requried by the 25th Amendment, then that person becomes President.
Just one small problem with that: the new VP has to be nominated by the President, so there’s little, if any, chance of a Republican being chosen before the next Presidential election.
Hmmm…speaking of “his,” I wonder if anyone would challenge Pelosi, or Hillary Clinton, or any other woman, becoming President on the grounds that the Constitution refers to the President as “he.”
If Biden were to shuffle off this mortal coil, I’m pretty sure that a replacement candidate would be picked by the DNC. If trump and Pence both went down from Covid or a weird murder-suicide, Nancy would become pres and there wouldn’t be a danged thing anybody could do about because by the time they tried she’d already be sworn in and that, as they say, would be that. She wouldn’t be a candidate for election and any kind of legal challenge would be subject to the clock, running out of.
Agreed completely that if Trump and Pence went down immediately in a freak accident, Pelosi becomes president.
It’s if they both got Covid, what kind of conditional shenanigans (if any) would Trump or the Republicans try and pull to prevent Pelosi from ascending if a VP can’t be appointed (never mind even confirmed)
I can totally see Trump tweeting “Don’t worry!! I have best doctors and worse case Pence and I have appointed VPs in our wills!”
Yeah, the President can’t magically refute the constitutional lines of succession. If he wants a new VP Pence needs to resign or die first - the President can’t fire him, he’s elected by the voters just as much as Trump was - and then there’s the nomination/consideration/vote process in Congress. So no end-around there. Pelosi becomes President.
In terms of nominees? If Biden dies before the convention we get a free-for-all in which a LOT of feelings are going to be hurt. But there’s a process there that goes back more than 100 years.
If it happens AFTER the convention when Biden is the official nominee? It really falls to the DNC. While Biden’s VP nominee is the logical pick there’s no rule that guarantees it. There would at least be a short list of people for the DNC to pick from and each faction of the party could add to it.
IIUC, a VP nomination by Trump (if Pence dies 5 minutes before Trump) or by Pence (if Trump dies 5 minutes before Pence) would have to be approved by both Houses of Congress. So the job will go to Pelosi as long as the House D’s say “Nay” to Jared(?).
Sure, someone will take the he/she problem to Scotus, but they’ll lose on a 5-4 vote. Maybe.
The first part sets up an interesting constitutional dilemma. Trump and Biden both die nearly simultaneously. Nancy Pelosi becomes Acting President. She should then appoint (with the consent of Congress) a Vice President. However, once that VP is confirmed, he or she would immediately become President, thereby ousting Pelosi from her new job.
There would be a great temptation for any Acting President in that scenario to simply refuse to nominate a new VP.
Which would all but ensure the Republicans would win. My read of the Bernie bros is grumpy but accepting. If their guy got sidestepped in this scenario it would be be 2016 all over again. Staying home or protest voting for the Republicans.
Re: OP. Pelosi is acting president per the constitution. Any legal shenanigans attempting to circumvent that would drag out past November thus being moot.
Wow, I hadn’t even thought of all THAT. So now we would have the Republicans clamoring, nay TELLING her who to appoint. Saying that this was a duly elected Republican presidency and it should be the Republicans telling her to appoint as President.
Then we’d have all sorts of ‘experts’ saying the Dems should try and push through as much as they can in the interim (not that anything would get voted through)…you’d have AOC et al screaming about how Pelosi should do all sorts of executive orders…how RBG should retire now* while theres a Dem President…god what a wonderful clusterfuck this would all be
*I actually think this is the most realistic wacky thing that would happen.
The most sensible thing would be for Pelosi to appoint the winner of the election in November to be Vice-President, and then that person is President for the end of the Trump term until January 20 when their own term starts.
There is a precedent for that. When Lincoln was thinking he would be defeated in the 1864 election he didn’t think it appropriate to stay on until March in the middle of a war. He considered the idea that if McClellan won, Lincoln would ask Seward to resign as Secretary of State, Lincoln would appoint McClellan as SecState, VP Hamlin would resign, then Lincoln would resign, and under the Presidential succession law at that time, McClellan would become acting President until his own term started.
Then Sherman took Atlanta and Lincoln didn’t have to think about this plan again.
I think if President Pelosi nominated a Vice President, that person would become the Vice President when confirmed. What makes anyone think that Pelosi would no longer be president when the new veep is sworn in?
Because the VP is 2nd in line to the presidency and the Speaker is 3rd. Once there is a VP, that person is now higher than Pelosi and becomes president. The line of succession after the VP only authorizes a person to “act” as president.