How to get rid of the President of the United States, Volume 1

The day that Donald Trump took the oath of office and assumed the duties of President of the United States, the campaign to impeach him began, according to the Washington Post. It is based on the belief that Trump was in violation of the U.S. Constitution from Day 1 by failing to divest himself of business properties that could be leveraged by foreign governments to buy favor from the White House.

Most likely it will be a while before anybody really tries to impeach Trump, if they ever do, but impeachment is only one of two ways the president could be removed from office. More on impeachment in shieldWALL tomorrow.

The other way is to argue successfully that he is insane or otherwise incapable of discharging his duties as president. In that case, the 25^th Amendment to the Constitution spells out a somewhat redundant procedure for removing the president and replacing him with his VP.

Under Section 4 of the 25^th Amendment, a president can be removed from office if the vice president and a majority of the cabinet officers – or other such body as Congress may provide – declare in writing that the president is unable to serve. This declaration must be delivered to the President Pro Tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, after which the vice president would immediately assume the office as acting president.

Then the president would have to vacate the office, right?

Not so fast.

If that were to happen, the president could basically appeal and suspend the decision by declaring in writing to the same legislative leaders that he or she suffered no such inability and therefore was fit to reclaim the powers and duties of his office.

But wait! There’s one more step.

If the president appealed, the vice president and his backers would have four days to (wait for it) deliver to the President Pro Tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President was indeed unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, no matter what he or she said.

At that point, the dog and pony show would trot on over to Congress, which must then decide once and for all whether the president is competent or not. Congress would have 21 days to make its determination.

A two-thirds vote of both houses would be required to decide that the president was unfit to serve and to turn the job over to the vice president. Otherwise, the president would resume his office and would no doubt tweet something about “the failing Congress” being weak, adding, “I won the vote bigly. Charges against me totally false. Never happened.”

And then, to get rid of him, he would have to be impeached.

Tomorrow: Impeachment, the other white meat