Why the 25th Amendment Won’t Be Invoked

Vanity Fair: “This is the palace-coup amendment of the Constitution. Chances of it being deployed against Donald Trump in his present state are close to zero, for two reasons. The first is that it’s almost impossible to execute, and it will destroy those who get behind it, even if they succeed (to say nothing of if they fail). The second is that an official palace coup against Trump is barely necessary, at this point. In many ways, it has already happened.”

“What can be easy for people to forget, because the White House is always a big deal, is this: Trump is a weak president. He has low approval ratings. He has little control over his own party. He has almost as little control over his own White House… Trump also spends less and less time in the office, according to Axios, often clocking in at 11 A.M. and out about five hours later. The rest of his day—what aides call ‘executive time’—is supposedly spent at home making calls and watching TV, which suggests that a lot of Americans are better prepared for the presidency than we’d known.

“In this sense, a palace coup may already be an episode in the rearview mirror—something that happened slowly and unofficially as Trump squandered his capital and aggravated every problem he faced. Today, with Robert Mueller investigating the White House, most Republicans, less by design than by accident, may have Trump where they want him.”