Only one amendment can save US from Trump’s 'deformed psyche': conservative

Amid growing calls for President Donald Trump’s removal from office via either impeachment or the 25th Amendment, a prominent conservative has declared that only one amendment can save the U.S. from its “embarrassing and terrifying” commander-in-chief: the 22nd. This is according to Yuval Levin, director of constitutional studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who took to the National Review on Thursday to explain not only why the 22nd Amendment is the country’s only chance of getting rid of Trump “soon,” but that protections should be set in place to prevent “presidential excess” in the future.

As Levin points out, there has been a “growing chorus of voices…pointing to President Trump’s frankly unhinged tweets and saying this is what the 25th Amendment to the Constitution is for.” While Levin specifies that these calls are coming from the left, there have also been plenty of examples from the right. Former Trump allies like Alex Jones, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and more have questioned the president’s mental health and argued for the 25th since the early days of the war on Iran, suggesting that his threats that he would destroy an entire civilization disqualified him from office.

“They certainly aren’t wrong about the tweets,” Levin agrees. “Trump’s online rants are glimpses of a deeply deformed psyche, and the fact that its bearer is the president of the United States is obviously both embarrassing and terrifying. And yet, even though they’re right about the president’s character and behavior, the chorus of situational constitutionalists calling for Trump’s removal are nonetheless barking up the wrong tree now.”

As Levin explains, while the 25th Amendment provides a number of mechanisms for the president’s replacement, in the end, these are only available if the president is medically incapacitated or voted unfit for office by their cabinet. In the event of the latter, however, “keeping the vice president in power as acting president over the president’s objection would require two-thirds votes in both houses — or in other words, a higher threshold in Congress than impeachment and removal, which requires a simple majority in the House and two-thirds only in the Senate. So simply put, if there is not a sufficient majority in Congress to impeach and remove the president, then he also cannot be removed using the 25th Amendment. A president who is capable of objecting to his being sidelined by the 25th Amendment can return to power. And whatever might be said about President Trump’s assorted deficiencies, he is certainly more than capable of making such an objection.” And while impeachment is technically an option if it has the votes in Congress, “there isn’t a sufficient number now, and there almost certainly isn’t going to be.”

“So those yearning for a post-Trump era are left instead to resort to another constitutional amendment,” says Levin. “One passed with something much more like our situation in mind and steeped in a realism about the danger of executive power unmatched by any other element of the Constitution. The 22nd Amendment, ratified in the wake of Franklin Roosevelt’s shattering of the norm of two-term presidencies, restored that norm as a formal constitutional constraint. It expresses the recognition that sometimes presidents might persuade the voting public to do foolish things, and that it is vital that it be made easier to wait out such presidents and set a clear limit on their time in office.”

As Levin warns, “Trump has talked about ignoring the 22nd Amendment, and we should put nothing past him. But it does seem likely that the amendment will help rid us of him soon, and leave us once again thanking a prior generation for creating an institutional protection against our weaknesses.” Levin concludes with advice on action that should be taken once Trump is gone, writing, “As we thank those prior generations, we should also follow their example. Without expecting anyone to openly disclaim or even privately regret their part in empowering Donald Trump, we should look for potentially bipartisan ways to apply some of the lessons we are learning now, and to build some protections against presidential excess in the future tense that we have lacked in the present tense.”