Conservative columnist: Trump should be removed under 25th Amendment

[DonViejo]

BY MALLORY SHELBOURNE - 05/17/17 10:00 AM EDT

Conservative columnist Ross Douthat on Tuesday argued President Trump should be removed under the 25th Amendment rather than impeachment.

In his New York Times column, Douthat says that the 25th Amendment, which permits the Cabinet to remove the commander in chief if a majority tells Congress he cannot perform his presidential duties, is a “more appropriate” method for “this strange situation than impeachment.”

“But ultimately I do not believe that our president sufficiently understands the nature of the office that he holds, the nature of the legal constraints that are supposed to bind him, perhaps even the nature of normal human interactions, to be guilty of obstruction of justice in the Nixonian or even Clintonian sense of the phrase,” Douthat writes. “I do not believe he is really capable of the behind-the-scenes conspiring that the darker Russia theories envision. And it is hard to betray an oath of office whose obligations you evince no sign of really understanding or respecting.”

Douthat says Trump lacks the basic qualities necessary for a person to serve as president and notes that it is the president’s own aides and confidantes who are leaking their grievances to the press.

“They have no respect for him, indeed they seem to palpate with contempt for him, and to regard their mission as equivalent to being stewards for a syphilitic emperor,” Douthat says of Trump’s staff.

more
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/333797-conservative-columnist-trump-should-be-removed-under-25th-amendment

[dalton99a]

1. But if you remove him, don't say anything about Russia

or the "Russia theories"

[Madam45for2923]

2. 25th Amendment would be the fastest route

[tanyev]

3. Problem is, his Cabinet is mostly ideological or incompetent toadies, too.

We've discovered one critical flaw in our system. The Founding Fathers never dreamed that the leaders of the legislative branch would be complicit in the executive's high crimes and misdemeanors. Those who passed the 25th Amendment assumed that the Cabinet would be full of honorable actors who placed country over party. The legislative branch has the opportunity to exercise oversight in cabinet appointments, but if they decline to use it...that brings us back to complicit.