Establishment Republicans Plotting to Remove President Donald Trump from the Oval Office

Bill Kristol and Ross Douthat have respectively gone public with their scheming to remove President Donald Trump from office.

Douthat wrote a New York Times column published Tuesday night that called for Trump to be removed from office via the 25th Amendment to the Constitution

Kristol wrote on Twitter Tuesday that his and his allies goal is to “dispose of Trump” and “Trumpism” but that it will take time, “Several of you have asked, What IS path forward? Well, we’re working on it. Disposing of Trump & overcoming Trumpism can’t be done in a day.”

Kristol was writing about the path forward for Republicans in wake of latest onslaught against Trump, “GOP members & donors are in grip of quiet desperation. Task of anti-Trump Republicans isn’t to say I told you so, but chart path forward.”

Douthat teased the genesis of his column with comments on Twitter about Trump and fired FBI DIrector James Comey, “I think the combination of saying this to Comey and then *firing* Comey makes a stronger 25th Amendment case than impeachment case…It suggests a man who literally cannot think through the howlingly obvious consequences of his actions.”

Excerpt from Douthat’s column in which he argues Trump has a ‘child’s mind’ and cannot be held legally accountable for his actions:

“ …There is, as my colleague David Brooks wrote Tuesday, a basic childishness to the man who now occupies the presidency. That is the simplest way of understanding what has come tumbling into light in the last few days: The presidency now has kinglike qualities, and we have a child upon the throne.

It is a child who blurts out classified information in order to impress distinguished visitors. It is a child who asks the head of the F.B.I. why the rules cannot be suspended for his friend and ally. It is a child who does not understand the obvious consequences of his more vindictive actions — like firing the very same man whom you had asked to potentially obstruct justice on your say-so.

A child cannot be president. I love my children; they cannot have the nuclear codes.

But a child also cannot really commit “high crimes and misdemeanors” in any usual meaning of the term. There will be more talk of impeachment now, more talk of a special prosecutor for the Russia business; well and good. But ultimately I do not believe that our president sufficiently understands the nature of the office that he holds, the nature of the legal constraints that are supposed to bind him, perhaps even the nature of normal human interactions, to be guilty of obstruction of justice in the Nixonian or even Clintonian sense of the phrase. I do not believe he is really capable of the behind-the-scenes conspiring that the darker Russia theories envision. And it is hard to betray an oath of office whose obligations you evince no sign of really understanding or respecting.

Which is not an argument for allowing him to occupy that office. It is an argument, instead, for using a constitutional mechanism more appropriate to this strange situation than impeachment: the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which allows for the removal of the president if the vice president and a majority of the cabinet informs the Congress that he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” and (should the president contest his own removal) a two-thirds vote by Congress confirms the cabinet’s judgment…

The Establishment sharks smell blood in the water and may be moving in to try take Trump out.

"I used to think Kristol was a ‘good guy’, now he’s a complete a**hole

RB...

If by chance did you see any of my post in the last 1.5 years? I called it "the great disillusionment"

All our vaulted hero's turned to zero's with their TDS. How many do I never read or listen too again, let me name a few: Kristol, Beck, Levin, Erickson and those are pundits. Politico's? Dick Armey, Haley Barbour what they did to rig it for "Thad", McCain, Trent Lott, Lindsey G do I need to go on? Some have had the light go on, that includes Rush, Kruthammer, and Hewitt, I can take them in limited doses, very limited....

Let’s go to the relevant sections of the 25th:

“Section 3. Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.”

This is how, fortunately, it has always been invoked, usually for the period of a pending surgery.

“Section 4. 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.”

So the plotters have to get Mike Pence and a majority of the Cabinet to go along with the premise that President Trump is psychologically or psychiatricly disabled, if a convenient physical disability doesn’t arise.

Failing that, Congress would then have to rush through legislation with a veto-proof majority to create an alternate body, made up of God knows whom, to declare Trump disabled, and then hope a judge somewhere doesn’t stay its declaration or declare the legislation unconstitutional.

“Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days 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. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.”

So Congress has to then gin up a two-thirds vote of both Houses to override the President’s declaration of ability, within three weeks, a process that could be repeated again and again just by having him file the appropriate letter.

Every presumption in the 25th Amendment is in favour of the President, as it should be, lest it be used by irresponsible schemers to remove a healthy but undesirable President.

People who cite the 25th Amendment as a miracle escape clause are deluding themselves, especially if they have read it.

Looks like Kristol got his orders from Neocon Godfather, Richard Perle.

Trump needs to shape-up according to Perle.

Perle still needs zillions to put the finishing touches on the oil company he started w/ his war profiteering from the Iran war....... the war the calculated warmongering neocons duped GwB into.

Course, Perle stays above the fray----dining in fine Paris restaurants on tuffled squab in Armagnac Sauce ...quaffing crystal flutes of chilled Châteauneuf-du-Pape of impeccable Southern Rhône vintage.

Kristol better hurry up.....Perle needs the war profiteering zillions.

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