Could the 25th Amendment really remove Trump from office?

It's possible, but it would require some bold moves from the vice president and Trump's Cabinet

Trump and Pence in front of Trump's golf course
(Image credit: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)

Since the election of Donald Trump and the subsequent descent of our country into increasingly unmanageable political and constitutional chaos, Americans have become acquainted with a previously obscure article in the 25th Amendment to the Constitution that allows a president's own Cabinet to begin the process of removing him from office. Such a backdoor to removing an incapacitated or malevolent president from office never existed before 1967 — the Constitution's architects made it extraordinarily difficult to remove the chief executive through impeachment.

Trump has proven in myriad ways — most recently his inability to unequivocally condemn neo-Nazis for their role in deadly violence — that he is unfit for the presidency and incapable of carrying out his constitutional obligations to all citizens. Not only has he committed a litany of arguably impeachable offenses in his first seven months in office, his erratic, aggressive tweets, rambling public appearances and statements, lack of basic focus, and competence and inability to run a functioning executive branch, all call into question his baseline mental capacity. The president has not aides but babysitters and regents who constantly leak to the press that the president is an unhinged, undisciplined, tyrannical mess harboring racial and personal resentments against everyone from African-Americans to Mika Brzezinski.

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David Faris

David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. He is a frequent contributor to Informed Comment, and his work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Indy Week.