JUST PUBLISHED:
Yale shrink says Trump officials reached out to her last fall, suggests his mental state is rapidly deteriorating
From the Chauncey DeVega article: Psychologist John Gartner, who has been a leading voice about the perils of Trump's presidency and the dangers he poses to the United States and the world, described the New York Times op-ed, in an email, as an "extraordinary document by any standards."
Essentially, the White House staff have de facto informally invoked the 25th Amendment, recognizing among themselves that [Trump] is incapable of carrying out the duties of the office. Knowing that he is dangerously mentally unbalanced, they are seeking to provide ballast to keep him from capsizing the ship of state. This is a madness of King George situation. Or perhaps we should say the emperor's new clothes, where everyone can see the emperor has no sanity, even though no one is allowed to say it aloud.
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BREAKING NEWS: Top officials including Dan Coats have denied writing the OpEd.
Now the speculation is rampant including that it might have been Ivanka Trump.
Related from Axios: Exclusive: Trump's nightmare: "The snakes are everywhere”
Nikki Haley, Kellyanne Conway and Don McGhan make this list of possibilities.
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Last night Lawrence O'Donnell made a good case that the NYT OpEd anonymous author is Dan Coats. He thought it was between Coats and Pompeo and the later has already denied being the author. By the time you read this, we may have the answer. He even showed parts of the Andrea Mitchell interview shown in the photo below which I used for my diary of July 20th. Rather than rewrite the diary I am simply reposting it. Here’s the Lawrence O’Donnell segment if you missed it.
Has Coats gone rogue? According to The Washington Post this is what a White House official said:
Inside the White House, Trump’s advisers were in an uproar over Coats’s interview in Aspen, Colo. They said the optics were especially damaging, noting that at moments Coats appeared to be laughing at the president, playing to his audience of the intellectual elite in a manner that was sure to infuriate Trump.
“Coats has gone rogue,” said one senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide a candid assessment. Washington Post
I think a far better case has been made that Trump has gone rogue. What can be done with a rogue president?
Tellingly it was a Canadian who suggested a military coup d'état as a way to remove Trump from office before he can do any more damage: The Trump-Putin summit: Hired hand at work? It is by John Colarusso , Professor of Languages and Linguistics and Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, McMaster University, and was published in The Conversation of July 16, 2018.
Emphasis added:
Treason is defined as aiding the enemy. Will aiding the adversary suffice? I would say yes. It’s a fitting label for an atrocious act. No one, even anyone in his “base,” can deny that he is failing to live up to his oath of office.
What to do?
The cabinet can invoke the 25th amendment and remove him by declaring him unfit for office — not a hard case to make.
The Republicans in the House of Representatives could screw up their nerve and draw up articles of impeachment to pass on to the Senate for a trial.
We could all wait until November, hoping that the Russians will not corrupt that round of voting and pray that a Democratic Congress will do what the GOP should have done a year ago.
Perhaps the military will give Trump a parade and remove him. After all, extraordinary violations of norms call for extraordinary remedies.
Then again, when he fully absorbs the outcry, Trump will likely just utter two dismissive words: “Fake news.”
Realistically there is only one way a president who has been behaving like he’s the puppet of a dictator and endangering our national security to be quickly removed from office. That is, of course, through Section 4 of the 25th Amendment.
It would be done by using the broad definition of the president being unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, because the primary duty of the office is to uphold the oath of office.
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” (Scroll down to see why this doesn’t include “protect against all enemies foreign and domestic.”)
Unable vs. Unwilling: Therein lies the question.
If the 25th Amendment is invoked it does not have to be for a medical or psychiatric reason which might need to be spelled out. Being unable, as opposed to unwilling, to uphold his oath of office would seem to be a valid justification. Being unwilling to uphold the oath of office would be justification for impeachment.
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.
Not that anyone needs a reminder of the process, but here a Time Magazine article if you want to refresh your memory: Could the 25th Amendment Be Trump's Downfall? Here's How It Works.
If Trump was removed under the 25th he would have to prove to the Senate that the decisions that prompted his removal were volitional and made for a reason and that he was upholding the Constitution. He would have to explain his rational justification to the satisfaction of the Senators acting deciding his fate.
The reason given under oath could be fodder for impeachment if he lies.
This occurred while his own DNI Dan Coats was being interviewed by Andrea Mitchell. His candid answers to the pointed questions Mitchell asked him cast Trump in a decidedly bad light.
The host and guests speculated that Trump was watching the interview and decided on the spur of the moment, without consulting with anyone (except perhaps Putin) to call Sarah Sanders and tell her to post the Tweet saying Bolton would be inviting Putin to Washington.
My impression is that he did this during an episode of uncontrolled rage without considering the potential ramifications and consequences.
At this point, it doesn’t matter that those so-inclined can say he is prone to reacting to narcissistic injury with narcissistic rage. This would not be an invocation of the 25th for a psychiatric reason, which Duty to Warn founder Dr. John Gartner and thousands of members, many of them mental health professionals, have advocated for.
Having uncontrolled fits of rage no matter the cause and acting on them in a way that imperils the nation's security, and furthermore doing so without consulting even with his Director of National Security Dan Coats, Secretary of State Pompeo and other top officials, but in a matter which could be treasonous justifies removal under the 25th Amendment.
This isn’t trump engaging in a vindictive insulting Tweetstorm after someone disses him in a Tweet.
We don’t know why he did it.
It doesn’t matter.
It is enough to know that he did it.
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5 U.S. Code § 3331 - Oath of office
An individual, except the President, elected or appointed to an office of honor or profit in the civil service or uniformed services, shall take the following oath: “I, AB, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.” This section does not affect other oaths required by law.