Donald Trump Needs to Be Removed

He is becoming increasingly dangerous and unable to perform the duties of his office, requiring the invocation of the 25th Amendment.

Steven Beschloss is a journalist, author, and filmmaker. Subscribe to his Substack, America, America.

Illustration by Riley Levine

It’s useless to spotlight every crazy post spat out by Donald Trump. But his post yesterday—on Easter Sunday—struck me as reaching a new level of danger and derangement, requiring us to pause and unpack both what he threatened and the response it demands.

Here’s what I said right after he posted on his Truth Social platform:

Writing many hours later, my thinking has only grown more resolute. Let’s put aside for a moment the fact that this profane post was published on the morning of Easter Sunday. He is explicitly threatening to commit war crimes by targeting civilian infrastructure, attacks that will surely cause immeasurable suffering and growing casualties among the country’s civilian population of over 92 million.

As the Geneva Convention defined in 1949, “Civilian objects shall not be the object of attack or of reprisals.” The International Criminal Court reiterated this in 1988: “Attacks must not be directed against civilian objects.”

It’s not the first time he’s threatened this. In his rambling address last Wednesday night, he threatened to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages where they belong.” But now he was more specific and more desperate.

What president would spew a series of profanities and with such mad glee? “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH!” In his deranged mind, he may think this angry demand could succeed in intimidating the Iranian regime, rather than exposing his own desperation.

And then he follows it up by saying “Praise be to Allah.” As if this would demonstrate that he “understands” the regime’s theocratic preferences? Or that mocking their religion on the most sacred holiday of the Christians would somehow shame the Iranians into submitting to his demands?

Taken together, the contents of this post provide the clearest possible evidence that this man must be removed from office—that he is unfit to carry out his duties, which require someone capable of rational thought. His increasingly extreme actions, impossible to miss, cannot be glossed over. Something is terribly wrong with him. It is deadly dangerous.

We have a constitutional mechanism for Trump’s removal. The 25th Amendment—pursued in the wake of the assassination of John F. Kennedy—was ratified on February 10, 1967. Nebraska was the first state to ratify the proposed amendment and Minnesota and Nevada were the 37th and 38th states to ratify, providing the necessary three-fourths threshold needed for it to become the the law of the land.

Successfully invoking the 25th requires the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet declaring that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Yes, Trump could (and surely would) reject this invocation, which is why the amendment sets out the role of Congress: Two-thirds of the members of the House and Senate would need to vote for his removal and the installation of the vice president as the acting president.

I have no illusions that this can be quickly achieved, not with a feckless Republican-led Congress and cabinet that has decided it’s in their interests to kowtow to Donald J. Trump. But the evidence is exceedingly clear—beyond a question of partisan differences—that our nation (and the globe) faces increasingly grave danger by allowing this man to continue to control the levers of America’s awesome power.

That means the responsibility resides not just with the Republicans, but with every elected member of Congress—to speak up and demand the invocation of the 25th to remove Trump from power. One by one, step by step, a growing collective force can lead to this necessary change. Failing to do so makes them complicit with whatever horrors may come next.

If you agree, I hope you will spread the message.

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