Forget the 25th Amendment
It's time to commit Donald Trump. Florida's Baker Act is the way to do it.
We’re ten years into what sadly will be known as the Trump era, and our national discourse still doesn’t know how to deal with the convicted felon from Queens.
“UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” That’s what America’s Commander-in-Chief posted in a message to a Muslim country of 90 million. By any reasonable standard, that’s a declaration of insanity by the leader of history’s most powerful military. In states like Florida, which allow for the involuntary detention of individuals in a mental health crisis, this and many other of Trump’s postings would be offered as evidence of the necessity of the state taking action. Under Florida’s Baker Act, one of the tests needed for the state to commit an individual against their will is the likelihood that the person would engage in self-harm or endanger others.
Any lawyer arguing for invoking the Baker Act with Donald Trump would have the easiest of slam-dunk cases. “Your honor, shortly after his 79th birthday, the Florida resident named Donald Trump threatened the head of state of a foreign country with assassination unless he surrendered his country. While it’s unclear exactly to whom Mr. Trump expects the foreign leader to surrender his country, it is known that Mr. Trump has access to an unusually large collection of lethal weapons, including nuclear bombs and missiles.”
I mean, really, is there a Florida judge not named Aileen Cannon who would not acknowledge that the state must take action to protect the lives of, well, millions?
But here we are, a once serious nation with a clearly deranged president, and our best journalists are covering the possibility that America will go to war with yet another Muslim country as if it were the summer of 1990 and George H. W. Bush was president. How many stories are being written with some version of the phrase, “the President is consulting with his advisers,” without pointing out that the advisers are an unqualified collection of drunks, Russian assets, and know-nothing fools?
Did you see Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin ask Pete Hegseth a question unimaginable in a pre-Trump America? Referencing Trump’s first term desire to have the military shoot protestors, Slotkin asked, “Have you given the order to be able to shoot at unarmed protesters in any way?” the former career CIA officer asked Hegseth. “I’m just asking the question, don’t laugh.”
The latter was necessary because Hegseth had his usual smirk that he wears through the world as a public service announcement to make it instantly apparent that an idiot has arrived.
“What is that based on? What evidence would you have that an order like that has ever been given?” Hegseth demanded in the faux outrage tone he likely perfected when asked by his bosses at Fox News if he raped a co-worker or his first wife wanted to know if he was the father of a Fox News producer’s child. (Fox paid a settlement to the co-worker, and Hegseth is now married to the former producer.)
“It is based on Donald Trump giving that order to your predecessor, to a Republican secretary of defense, who I give a lot of credit to because he didn’t accept the order,” Slotkin answered. “He had more guts and balls than you because he said, I’m not going to send in the uniformed military to do something that I know in my gut isn’t right. He was asked to shoot at their legs. He wrote that in his book. That’s not hearsay. So your pooh-poohing of this — it just shows you don’t understand who we are as a country, who we are.”
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