The set of “Morning Joe” took some time Thursday to — again — talk about exercising the Constitution’s 25th amendment to remove Donald Trump from the White House.
The idea was precipitated on set during a discussion of Gabriel Sherman’s new piece in Vanity Fair which described Trump as “unraveling” and advisers “struggling to contain” him.
“This is not normal. This is crazy,” show regular Willie Geist said. “I would just add the 25th amendment — a lot of people tweet about it and shout about the 25th amendment — remains a long shot because it’s the clause that would be invoked by the vice president and the cabinet. That’s a long way to go to ask the vice president and the president’s own cabinet to remove the president of the United States.”
“Even then it goes to a vote of the House and Senate,” said a somewhat dejected Scarborough. “I haven’t seen any much courage at all coming from Republicans.”
Show co-host Mika Brzezinski wasn’t so sure, alluding to a bit of news form yesterday that Trump had nominated Kirstjen Nielsen to lead the Department of Homeland Security. Nielsen is close ally of Chief of Staff John Kelly.
“DHS is a cabinet position right?” she asked at one point. “I don’t think Kelly’s leaving. I think he’s getting his troops in place to act?”
Act? As in a 25th amendment way? — time will tell.
It was the second time in two days the 25th amendment made an appearance on the program. On Wednesday, Scarborough openly called for it to be considered as an option.
“There’s something called the 25th amendment that they’re going to have to start looking at,” he said. “This is not acceptable as the status quo. We have the most powerful Republican on Capitol Hill saying the president of the United States could be leading us toward nuclear war, and Republican senators remain silent.”