Mike Pence has ruled out invocation of the 25th Amendment. I could try to analyze his entire statement, and I’ll post it below, but right now I just want to focus on one sentence:
Invoking the 25th Amendment in such a manner would set a terrible precedent.
Let’s be clear here, Pence is claiming that it would be wrong to communicate to future presidents who aspire to tyranny and the violent overthrow of our constitutional order that such a betrayal of our nation and our constitution renders one, by definition, unfit to hold the power of the presidency.
I rather think the opposite. I think it would be wrong to communicate to future aspiring dictators that we accept violent insurrections as the product of a mind fit for American leadership. I think Pence is a coward, and I think that in this statement, he is embracing evil. In truth, I think that his behavior here is worse than that of Trump last week. Trump, with his incredible selfishness, isn’t claiming that coups are acceptable in general. Trump claims only that his violent insurrection is acceptable (or even good). Pence claims that not only does he find Trump’s insurrection acceptable, but that he wants to set a precedent for all future President-led insurrections that they, too, are acceptable.
Trump wants to rule as an autocrat for the rest of his life. Pence wants America to open its arms to autocracy for as long as the soil beneath our feet exists.
Read the statement of an evil man:
Mike Pence’s statement disavowing the 25th Amendment
Either Trump is delusional about the result of the election (unfit to serve), or is deliberately seeking to overturn a free and fair election (engaging in sedition). By refusing to invoke the 25th Pence is implicitly accusing Trump of the latter, in which case, by the letter of the constitution impeachment (or removal under the 14th), not removal under the 25th, is the appropriate mechanism.
You’ve got two choices.
You set the precedent that a president might one day have their presidential powers revoked by the vice president.
Or you set the precedent that attempting to violently overthrow the US government will carry no consequences whatsoever.
It is clear which precedent Pence finds easier to stomach. A cynic would interpret it as Pence being shy about limiting presidential power in any way, because he hopes to some day hold that office himself.
Expecting trumps toady vp to do what is right for the country is a fools errand. They have spent the last four years helping only themselves and their party. Why expect anything different from them now in the last days of their term? Traitors are going to be traitors to the end.
@invivomark, 2:
That’s a false dichotomy.
There’s another choice: namely that attempting to violently overthrow the US government doesn’t just get you removed from office, it gets you impeached and convicted and barred from ever holding office again, or something else.
If I were in the mood to be charitable to Pence (and while I’m not chanting “hang him” like some people, I’m very much NOT in the mood to be charitable) then I could suggest that 25th amendment immediate removal would actually be Trump getting off lightly and that that’s why Pence isn’t for doing it. very occasional poster @1 has it right: nobody is suggesting (surprisingly) that Trump isn’t fit to serve. They’re saying he’s fit to serve but fucked it. Which, well, yeah, I guess.
I do actually feel a bit sorry for Pence (I know, I know), but really, what are his options? Look like an arse, or look like an arse. Then again, he’s been VP to Trump, so he really knew what he was letting himself in for. I take it back – fuck him.
Serious question: if you’re 25thed out of the White House, does that in and of itself stop you from ever running again? Sounds daft, but unless it *explicitly* prevents a run in 2024, I’d prefer impeachment.
@ sonfrojblake
“does that in and of itself stop you from ever running again?”
That’s an interesting question. The automatic penalty on conviction after impeachment is removal from office. The bar on further participation seems to be a separate sanction requiring its own vote. That’s how it’s alway work on those few occasions in the past.
There is however authority that such disqualification requires only a simple majority, not the two thirds required for removal.
That raises the interesting question as to whether one can impose the disqualification on a simple majority even if there hasn’t been the two thirds vote for conviction.
My gut feeling would be no. I think it’s implicit that the imposition of a penalty is conditional on a conviction. And that’s ways been the case in the previous cases.
But there’s not a lot of precedent on impeachment so who knows. If the argument can be made that disqualification is a precaution not a punishment, then that might not require a finding of guilt. It would be analogous to the disqualification on people becoming company directors; or even from medical practice. You can lose your doctor’s licence for unfitness without any finding of wrongdoing as it’s a public protection, maintaining the reputation of the profession issue.
Seems so. IIRC, Pence has sort of acknowledged that the election wasn’t “stolen” from Trump but OTOH he’s still trying to avoid acknowledging that Trump’s recent actions amount to a coup or sedition. Here he’s only explicitly saying that Trump isn’t incapacitated, which is fair enough. Implicitly he supports or at least prefers impeachment-removal, not the least because then *he* doesn’t have to do the dirty work.
Then again, GOP senators may still not want to do the dirty work, either. Turns out the impeachment-removal process is practically dead letter if the criminal president still holds a strong support of his own party’s voter base.
Coincidentally
Should edit out the last word from above.
@sonofrojblake(#4):
Using the 25th is not an inherently permanent dismissal, in fact It isn’t a dismissal at all. What the 25th does is give a mechanism to determine if a US president is not capable of being the US president and if so how to do a transition of power while their term as US president lasts until they are again capable of being the US president (during that term).
Do note that things we’d generally consider making people unfit to work do not necessarily preclude them being capable of being the president of the US. The final year(s) of Reagan being a prime example of this. And that things that would invoke the long term use of the 25th usually being so severe that they’d preclude campaigning for a second term.
@Who Cares
And things that make someone incapable of being president of the US do not necessarily make someone incapable of doing other work. This is because different jobs have different duties and therefore different job requirements. The only thing that we have from the drafters of the constitution that resembles a job description for the presidency is 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.
As a result, if a person’s character exhibits a fundamental faithlessness, or if a person repeatedly acts contrary to the letter or spirit of the constitution, that person should be deemed
Trump exhibits both fundamental faithlessness and a hostility to law, democracy, and the constitution. He is literally unable to preserve, protect, and defend the constitution. He is unable to faithfully execute the laws.
He is, in short, incompetent to be president on any plain reading of the 25th Amendment.
LOL, nope. Trump loves campaigning because he loves hearing people scream out how important he is and how dedicated they are to him. This feeds his twisted ego. But the fact that he can campaign doesn’t tell us whether he can or cannot defend the constitution. There are a lot of egomaniac pop singers & TV stars that have the ability to run around the country begging people to love them. They don’t all have the capacity to discharge the duties of the office of POTUS.
@sonofrojblake
Given Pelosi & Schumer advocated for invocation of the 25th, clearly people are suggesting and outright declaring that Trump isn’t fit to serve.
I may not matter on the national stage, but count me among them.
@Crip Dyke(#9):
The 25th is not meant to remove presidents that are morally unfit to govern the US. And that is your whole argument of why it should be used on Trump. Unfortunately morally unfit does not render a person incapable of governing, it just renders them incapable of virtuous/good governing. That is what is impeachment is for,
Now we have all that out of the way I see one reason (and that one should been used in the 3rd or 4th week of November not just now) why Trump should have been hit with the 25th. Once it became clear he lost the election he refused to govern. Funny enough probably the only (to me) valid reason outside of incapable to govern, unwilling to govern, for use of the 25th. But this is not a long term (well unless the targeted president is stubborn) application of the 25th, the moment they agree to stop being unwilling to govern it should be lifted.
Further since you are insisting that this is about violating the oath of office you are barking up the wrong amendment, you want the 14th amendment, section 3:
A strict reading means that Pence has been acting president since Jan 6. But they won’t go for a strict reading, that means they first need to either impeach (and convict) Trump or wait until Jan 20, noon. The 25th won’t cut it since he’d still be president. This is also my take on why McConnell hasn’t reconvened the senate, he might as others are saying not have the senators to insure a super majority at the moment, but for me he is waiting on the Democrats to use the 14th amendment so that not a single Republican has to vote against Trump.
(#10):
No they were afraid he’d start a war as a distraction. Not that he was incapable of governing. That said as I wrote above Trump hasn’t been governing since the end of November and should have been hit with the 25th for just that.
@Who Cares
And your argument boils down to legislative intent overrules plain language. This is not true, and if you’re not familiar with USA principles of statutory & constitutional interpretation, allow me to quote from the Congressional Research Service:
“[U]nable to discharge the duties of the office” is the phrase in the 25th. It says nothing about being unconscious or about the disability being medical. In fact, it is frequently said that a president who had family members held hostage would be emotionally compromised to such a degree that invoking the 25th would be appropriate. The language is incredibly broad and expansive, and per the most authoritative source on legal construction and interpretation it is wrong to assume that Congress meant to send to the states for ratification something more limited but were ignorant of the expansive nature of their own writing.
Moreover, the ultimate judge of the meaning of the 25th is Congress: if they say that a president is unable to discharge the duties of the office, then, constitutionally, that president is by definition unable to discharge the duties of the office.
What? No. I’m not interpreting the oath of office. I’m interpreting the 25th Amendment and what you’re quoting has nothing to do with the 25A. The only reason that the oath is relevant is that we have no specific list anywhere of the duties of the presidency. The oath can be used to the limited extent that it establishes that the authors of the constitution found no duty more important than preserving, protecting, and defending the constitution. The oath is quite short, so it further establishes that most duties of the President are at least arguably less important than preserving, protecting, and defending the constitution.
Pffft! You’re going to owe me a lot of tea after this. A strict reading very definitely does NOT mean that Pence has been acting president since Jan 6th. There are only two methods of removing an acting president. Certainly Congress may use the 14thA to clarify that Rebellion & Insurrection is a “high crime or misdemeanor” according to the constitution’s impeachment clause. However the 14thA is not independent of the rest of the constitution, and certainly the 3rd clause of 14A is not independent of the Due Process clause of that same amendment.
You can’t apply the penalties of clause 3 without granting due process. As Trump is a sitting president, “due process” in this case constitutes impeachment proceedings.
Pence is NOT acting president. Pence has NEVER been acting president. That interpretation is silly and legally ignorant.
@Crip Dyke(#12):
Both in plain reading and in legislative intent being morally bankrupt is not one of the things that can be used to invoke the 25th like you demand. Being morally bankrupt does not imply incapability of governing.
That is where all those other clauses, amendments and rules are for.
To put it differently following your demand would have required to remove Obama for some seriously morally bankrupt decisions despite him being the best (IMNSHO) president due to how he managed to govern despite the Republicans waging war on him.
You are wrong, and grossly so.
In plain reading and in legislative intent, the president being literally **anything** can be one of the things used to invoke the 25th Amendment **IF** in the interpretation of Congress that thing causes the president to be unable to discharge the duties of the office.
I don’t know what you think are the “things that can be used to invoke the 25th”, but it really is unlimited. What makes the 25th available is not the underlying cause, but rather the effect. That’s why this bit
also misses the mark. I am arguing that the president is literally unable to discharge his duties. In Trump’s particular case this might be due to sociopathy and malignant narcissism, but whether you accept my argument or not, my argument is not based on morality. It’s based on Trump being unable to discharge his duties as I understand them. While Obama made some immoral choices,
1) the fact that a person failed to discharge the duties of the office on one occasion is not the same as being **unable** to discharge those duties
and
2) all immoral choices are not constitutionally equal: an immoral choice in nominating a rapist to be an ambassador is rightly condemned. Yet the constitution grants the President the right to make nominations. Even if the President fails to disclose that the President knows the nominee to be a rapist, such a nomination does not attack or subvert the constitution or the balance of powers.
As a result of this, I would say that there might be domestic spying that happened under Obama that would lead me to conclude that he was immorally violating the constitution rather than upholding it, but I would also be fairly likely (I can’t be certain, since these programs, to the extent that they exist, are/would be classified) to conclude that between legislation passed by Congress, jurisprudence by Article III judges, and precedent set by past executives that he was operating in a political and constitutional environment where he reasonably believed he was acting intra vires. My interpretation of constitutional limits, after all, is not legally binding on Obama or anyone else. So I can say that while I might have judged Obama out of bounds, I couldn’t say that if my interpretation of constitutional limits were commonplace amongst Congress and the courts that Obama would have found himself unable to stay within them.
Your counterargument, then, fundamentally misunderstands my argument and ultimately fails. Again, the 25th never mentions any source for the disability. It only requires that the disability exists. If the disability is (to use your words) a moral one, a moral disability is still a disability and therefore the broad language of the 25th would still apply.
Now let me ask you a question: In your mind, do you really believe that Trump is capable of preserving, protecting, and defending the constitution against an anti-democratic threat? If not, why isn’t that a basis for removal via the 25th?
As a reminder, the 25th says nothing about morality or medicine or anything else. It is solely predicated on the inability to discharge the duties of the presidency. Your argument that an inability to discharge is somehow magically not an inability to discharge if the inability arises through a defect in morality has no basis in the constitutional text. As a further reminder, the legal scholars in this area already accept that being emotionally compromised such that one’s decision making can’t be trusted (the famous case study being a hypothetical situation in which close family members of a sitting president are being held hostage). There is no valid argument that sociopathy or malignant narcissism could not give rise to a disability every bit as constitutionally significant.
So,
1. do you think Trump can defend our constitutionally described democratic form of government against anti-democratic threats?
and
2. If no, what, if anything, prevents that disability from being actionable under the 25th?
Ah, as speculated, the Q Shaman guy is going down the “President told me to do it” defence route. So now he wants a pardon.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pervertjustice/2021/01/09/the-only-radical-idea/#comment-23802
If they all start doing that, that’s a really hard for Trump. Does he throw them under a bus and lose his base; or does he not want to risk the incitement charges (however they may arise)?
But he didn’t tell them to do that in so many words; what he did is use dogwhistles and coded language, and said to march “peacefully”. So, no — literally speaking, the Prez did not tell them to do any ransacking or violence.
cf. Incitement: Is the President Guilty of Inciting the Riot?
PS re
He won’t lose his base, no matter what he does.
That noted, he’s already thrown them under a bus:
cf. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/us/politics/trump-statement-violence.html
““I want to be very clear: I unequivocally condemn the violence that we saw last week,” Mr. Trump said. “Violence and vandalism have absolutely no place in our country and no place in our movement. Making America Great Again has always been about defending the rule of law, and supporting law enforcement officials”, Mr. Trump said.”
(My fix on the unbalanced quotation marks in the original)