It is time to invoke the 25th Amendment. It is time for President Trump — as he told the violent, radical thugs who support him no matter what; who crawled over the U.S. Capitol like spiders; who breached House and Senate chambers; who brazenly confronted overwhelmed, ill-prepared law-enforcement officers; who forced lawmakers to take shelter — to “go home.”
But here’s what the president said first: “I know your pain. I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side.”
Then this: “This was a fraudulent election. But we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special.”
His comments were no mere dog whistle to his marauding posse. This was a full-throated war cry.
With his un-American words and his anti-democratic acts, Trump led this insurrection every bit as much as if he were storming the Capitol himself.
He will blow up democracy
This indecent man was unfit to serve when he was elected president, and he is unfit to serve for even the final 13 days of his presidency. We have seen what he is capable of: the disgusting call to Georgia’s secretary of state trolling for votes he did not get; pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to throw the whole election in the garbage.
There can be no doubt that the president is prepared to have his minions scorch the Earth and blow up democracy itself in order to stay in power. He is that determined, that desperate and that indifferent to anything other than staying in the Oval Office.
America cannot wait, with fear and bated breath, to see what abomination comes during the next 13 days.
What was to be a historic day in Congress — a vote of a joint session of Congress to affirm the election of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris — turned into political insurrection and the first storming of the Capitol since the War of 1812.
To his credit, Pence, Trump’s good soldier for four years, had earlier refused to reject the election results as Trump ordered, something the vice president cannot do anyway. Now Pence must take another, bolder step. He, along with the Cabinet must invoke the 25th Amendment.
We say this with not one shred of reluctance. We say this knowing it is not a simple process.
Dangerous man
To preserve our democracy for even the next two weeks, we are calling for Trump to be removed from office. He has lost all sense of reality — and is reveling in it. He put Americans in danger. Four people died in the chaos, three from medical emergencies. One woman among the mob inside the Capitol was shot and later died. We think this will only heighten the president’s taste for blood.
The amendment empowers the vice president and Cabinet to declare a president “incapacitated”: “Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”
This president is incapacitated.
This president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office — and since losing the November election has been disinclined to do so.
This president is a deranged and dangerous man.
He must be removed.
This story was originally published January 06, 2021 8:44 PM.