The sickest part of this ...

[Novara]

... is how many people close to the orange motherfucker witnessed this flat-out insanity and no one invoked the 25th Amendment.

"Suitcases"? "Truckloads of ballots"?

He's fucking batshit insane.

Yet no one thought to invoke the 25th.

[cbabe]

1. Don't bite the hand that feeds you.

[Irish_Dem]

2. The GOP does not care about what is good for the country. It is about power and wealth.

What happens to the American people or democracy is of no import to them whatsoever.

[Ocelot II]

3. Some of them thought about it.

The problem is that it's really hard to do it. The process for removing an unfit President is - if the VP and the majority of the cabinet have determined the President is unfit, they send a letter to that effect to the speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader. At that point, the Vice President immediately becomes President. If the President contests the finding against him, Congress can order the president’s removal by a 2/3 majority vote in each house. The Vice President remains President until the next election. I don't think a majority if the cabinet would have gone along with it, and even if they had, you'd still need a 2/3 majority in each house. Impeachment failed twice and the 25th Amendment is just as much of an uphill battle.

[Novara]

4. As hard as it is to remove a corrupt or insane president ...

... we have GOT to stop electing corrupt, insane people.

[Ocelot II]

7. The 25th amendment was intended to deal with a situation

where a president is seriously incapacitated by physical disability, as if they have a stroke or some such thing. It wasn't invoked when Reagan was shot because he was still able to work from the hospital while he recovered. I don't think anyone was considering the possibility that there would ever be a batshit crazy president. Corrupt presidents should be dealt with by impeachment, but obviously that didn't work.

[Novara]

9. Once again, the founders never envisioned THIS

They accounted for corrupt presidents but not batshit insane ones.

[Ocelot II]

15. The 25th Amendment was much more recent (1965)

than the Founders' original Constitution, and it was enacted in response to the Kennedy assassination. But even as recently as 1965 nobody contemplated the possibility of a barking mad president.

[Novara]

16. I didn't realize it was that recent.

But yeah. Throughout history, most people thought America wouldn't be stupid enough to elect someone this corrupt and insane.

[sop]

5. The growing consensus seems to be Trump is/was completely out of his fucking mind and totally

out of touch with reality, yet these sycophants continued to enable his disastrous plans. It looks like they're setting up an out for the DOJ; they can't prosecute Trump because the guy was/is bat shit crazy.

[Cheezoholic]

6. Fat Nixon is a GQP stooge

They know he's bat shit. It's the old "look something shiny" trick. MSM et. al. are all focused on his insanity meanwhile the GQP is establishing their fascist foundation solidly across the country from the ground up. The real fucking traitors won't be touched.

[Whiskeytide]

8. He's not insane. No one would send $ to a former president ...

… who said “my best people have looked at it and concluded that there was no fraud. So I’m going to go to Mara Lago and play some golf”. He knows that. He knew it then. He’s a severely damaged and emotionally corrupt asshole, but he freakin’ knows how to run a con. It’s his thing.

[Novara]

11. True. The BEST conman

And everybody is too afraid to touch him. It's how he gets away with everything.

[Whiskeytide]

14. I've heard that the best conmen are the ones who ...

… convince you that they are too stupid to run a con on you. He has spent a lifetime perfecting that technique.

He IS stupid by most objective standards. I’m not saying it’s just an act. But I think it’s really because he is simply and utterly uninterested if anything that’s not somehow a part of his con schemes.

[crickets]

25. Exactly. It's not that he's insane, it's that he has NO SHAME.

This is the biggest con he's ever tried, and it looks like he finally picked one too big to pull off.

[Novara]

12. It's simpler than that. He surrounds himself with corrupt people ...

... who will do anything for power.

[Blue Owl]

17. Tiptoe 'round the Slobfather

[Initech]

18. Honestly to me one of the craziest parts of this is:

That Trump duped his supporters into believing that they would get a full presidential pardon for murdering half of Congress to be able to allow Trump to become president again. That is some next level delusion right there.

And yeah he's a cult leader all right.

[Meadowoak]

19. How about mandatory prison time for everybody in Trump's

Inner circle that said nothing, did nothing but wrote a book to hawk after the fact.

[Hotler]

20. Barr could have said something after he resigned, hell, even before. Head law enforcement forgot

"See something. Say something", instead took a fat check from a publisher and wrote a book instead of standing up to TFG and protecting democracy. What if the pipe bombs went off and killed somebody because Barr walked and looked the other way.

[Novara]

21. They all did that because they're all self-serving corrupt motherfuckers

How many of them could have said something at the time but chose to cash in with a book later on?

[crickets]

26. 👆👆

[LymphocyteLover]

22. Rudy said they brought in a trashcan full of ballots

[towerbum]

24. It was rudy's booze ! he was starting DT'S !

[LymphocyteLover]

35. undoubtedly

[NNadir]

23. The 25th amendment is as unworkable as is the 2nd amendment.

The first case for which its mechanism was clearly called, nothing happened.

It sounded good on paper, but it would require people who cared about their country and who had courage.

Neither of these conditions, caring about our country or having courage, exist in the Republican party.

[Gaugamela]

27. IIRC, Liz Cheney mentioned the 25th in Friday's hearing, that several in Trump's

cabinet did discuss it, and that this will come out later in the hearings.

I could be wrong, I’m only going on memory.

[MacKasey]

28. Mike Pens knew something was going to happen on Jan 6

And Dan Quayle knew too

They could have called a press conference on Jan 5 and exposed everything

That was their duties as elected officials, even though Quayle was not serving at this time. An American would have blow the whistle on what was going to happen

[bringthePaine]

29. refuKKchickens live in unending fear - its the Fux "Raison d'etre"

[BlueJac]

30. Everyone wanted power with Trump.

[Raster]

32. And that is how tRump came to power... everyone thought "sure tRump will be a train-wreck...

...but he'll be our train-wreck... he's an idiot, we can control him. Think of all that power we'll be able to access!"

What they did not count on was that tRump is certifiable: toxic, narcissistic sociopath, who doesn't give a shit about normalities. You don't control someone like that. They. Control. You.

[Gaugamela]

31. Here it is from the 1/10 hearing:

LIZ CHENEY: And you will hear from witnesses how the day played out inside the White House. How multiple White House staff resigned in disgust and how President Trump would not ask his supporters to leave the Capitol. It was only after multiple hours of violence that President Trump finally released a video instructing the riotous mob to leave. And as he did so, he said to them quote, "We love you and you're very special." You will also hear that in the immediate aftermath of January 6th, members of the President's family, White House staff, and others tried to step in to stabilize the situation, quote, "To land the plane before the Presidential transition on January 20th." You will hear about members of the Trump cabinet discussing the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment and replacing the President of the United States. Multiple members of President Trump's own cabinet resigned immediately after January 6th. One member of the Cabinet suggested that the remaining Cabinet officers needed to take a more active role in running the White House and the Administration.

https://www.npr.org/2022/06/10/1104156949/jan-6-committee-hearing-transcript

[kwijybo]

33. He knew was a lie, they knew it was a lie.

The 25th is for a President that is incapable of doing his job, not one that's a lying sack of shit.

[Novara]

34. he WAS incapable of doing his job

Probably the most unqualified ever.

[Skittles]

36. GOP cares more about power than it does about Amerca

that is just a FACT

[NCLefty]

37. Only a few people legally could invoke 25a. And Trump picked loyalists+idiots for that group.

But perhaps you think there were enough cabinet members to go along with it ?