The Twenty-Fifth Amendment along with the bill introduced by Nancy Pelosi is enough to turn Trump’s obstinacy against him if he refuses to accept the election result.
Speculations are running unrestrained that President Trump, if loses, will refuse to concede his defeat. And the guesswork of political experts does not bear an iota of exaggeration given the multiple events where Donald Trump has made himself clear.
The first ever sign of his reluctance was witnessed during election campaigning in 2016 against Hillary Clinton. In his briefing to the people, the Republican leader made his stance clear that he will accept the election results only as long as he wins. His opponent Clinton called the statement appalling and horrifying further implying that the multi-millionaire businessman seems to bear no regard for the democratic constitution of the country.
Watch: Trump’s Reluctance To Be A Good Sport If He Loses
It is the year 2020 and Donald Trump did it again, this time as the President of the United States. When asked by a reporter in late September if he will transfer the house peacefully in event of his defeat, the obstinate figure standing at the podium reverted- “There won’t be a transfer, frankly, there will be a continuation.”
Given stark possibilities of the events, it would be naïve of the opposition and the Congress to not make necessary arrangements for the oath taking day beforehand.
In the light of the same, Nancy Pelosi on 9th October introduced a new bill that would establish a Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of the Office. The tool that the committee would use is the Twenty-Fifth amendment of the American constitution. Even if Trump refuse to concede the election results, house has got it covered. To clear the addled air regarding the entire event, let’s take one question at a time-
What Is The Twenty-Fifth Amendment?
This amendment of the constitution governs events and happenings pertaining to the President’s disability and succession. It provides the procedure for the succession or temporary replacement of the President in the event of death, removal, resignation, or incapacitation. If a President becomes incapacitated to deliver his duties on the ground of aforementioned factors, the Vice President takes up his office.
This amendment was introduced in the constitution after the assassination of J.F. Kennedy. Section 3 of Amendment 25th allows the President to declare himself “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” The cabinet and Vice President jointly are the decisive figures in the eye of Section 3, which, if clubbed with Section 4, can also block President’s return passage to the oval after becoming capacitated again.
How Pelosi’s Bill Could Show Trump The Way Out Of The Oval Office?
When Nancy Pelosi on 9th October introduced the bill in the house to establish the Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of the Office, she said that it has been drafted keeping in mind the President’s health. When President Trump contracted coronavirus in early October, there was a turmoil about the duties. The same is being used as a bulwark by Pelosi to create an exit strategy for the impossible president in the event of his denial.
Watch: Nancy Pelosi Discusses Creating A Commission On Presidential Capacity
The Twenty-Fifth Amendment provides two fold solutions to removing the President from the oval against his will. The first provides the Vice President and the Cabinet majority to jointly inform the Congress in a written document about the President’s incapacity. The second enables the Vice President alone along with a majority of ‘such other body as Congress may by law provide’ to declare the President incapacitated.
How Does The House Declare Trump Incapacitated?
This congressional appointed body would be a commission of 17 members chosen from both the parties, physicians and former high-executive branch officials. Once the Congress receives the declaration from the committee followed by two-third votes from both the houses, the president is replaced with the Vice President, in this case, Mike Pence. Trump might refuse to concede but he should know that others will.
This bill was introduced 9 days after the president was diagnosed with the coronavirus and to go by political expert’s understanding, the primary motive was to draw attention towards the deteriorating health of the president. However, during the global crisis and overt lunacy of Trump on public platforms and inside the White House, it won’t be very difficult for the opposition to prove him mentally unfit to deliver duties.
The 37th President of the US Richard Nixon has been there. When declared mentally incapacitated and was feared by his staff about the possibilities of launching a nuclear attack, Nixon faced likely impeachment. His Defense Secretary even informed the Joint Chiefs to not act upon any similar order if it comes directly from the President.
The Trump State Of Mind
46 years after Nixon, people in Washington and elsewhere have been repeatedly expressing concern over President Trump’s deteriorating mental state. In 2017, Republican Senator from Tennessee and former Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee Bob Corker said, “I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him.” He called White House, a day care center. In the same year, Donald Trump’s Deputy Attorney General requested the cabinet to invoke Twenty-Fifth Amendment after president fired James Comey, the F.B.I. Director.
In the Unhinged: An Insider Account of the Trump White House, published in 2018, Trump’s former White House adviser Omarosa Newman wrote, “mental decline could not be denied.” This was followed by another book in 2019 called ‘A Warning’ where an anonymous Trump official said, “He stumbles, slurs, gets confused, is easily irritated, and has trouble synthesizing information, not occasionally but with regularity.”
Not just officials but Trump’s blood relations themselves testify the threat that his mental state poses to the State. Mary L. Trump, the president’s niece, who is also a clinical psychologist describes her uncle as depicting the symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder in her recent tell-all book Too Much and Never Enough. Infamous personalities like Hitler and Stalin also have been reported by clinical psychologists to be the patients of Narcissistic personality disorder. Similarly, in 2017, psychologist John Gartner vouched for the removal of Trump from office by invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. He addressed that malignant narcissism is a psychiatric disorder that can make a person evil. He went on to define a few other psychological traits in the current President, — namely narcissism, paranoia, psychopathy and sadism. A person suffering from the above mentioned disorders can execute destructive actions if wounded or hurt.
The One That Should Draw Your Attention The Most
When Trump was about to be impeached in February, eight hundred mental health professionals came together to send a letter to Congress to warn them that “failing to monitor or to understand the psychological aspects of humiliating Trump could lead to catastrophic outcomes.”
Since the entire election season of 2020, we’ve been hearing Trump umpteenth times backlashing Joe Biden for his mental incapability and dementia. However, what America has been experiencing since the past four years is the worst experience that a mentally unfit president can bring to a nation. Both septuagenarian presidential candidates are somewhere mentally weak to be the president of the US.
But if we have to pick one, at least Biden won’t befriend and idolize dictators, lie blatantly to the people, catalyze insensitivity and hatred against minorities and most importantly, won’t refuse to concede result like Trump.
