This is one of Donald Trump’s
favourite movies.
A heroic president is captured by terrorists
aboard Air Force One.
But it’s also a film
of hidden constitutional depths.
"I’m told you want my interpretation
as to what the constitution
says about this situation"
Let me explain.
It deals with something
the constitution never considered:
What happens if the President
becomes unable to do their job?
Now, this could be
because Air Force One
was hijacked by terrorists.
Or it could be something
a little less dramatic.
What if the president
became mentally unstable?
This is all hypothetical of course.
President Donald J Trump has completed
his first periodic physical examination
as president of the United States.
I’ve found no reason whatsoever
to think that the president has
any issues whatsoever
with his thought process.
But what if a president
did have an issue?
The answer lies
in the US constitution’s
25th amendment.
The 25th amendment
provides a way in which
to remove a president for disability,
including both physical
and mental health.
It wasn’t meant to provide
a political way of eliminating
the president’s power.
To understand its origins
we need to go back to the 1960s.
It was the height of the Cold War.
The Cuban missile crisis
had nearly ended
in nuclear armageddon.
President John F Kennedy’s assassination
brought something sharply into focus.
What would happen if he had survived,
but wasn’t able to function as president?
There was nothing in the constitution.
In the past -
when president Woodrow Wilson
had a major stroke while in office,
he was simply shut away
by his doctors and hidden
from public view.
When President James Garfield
was shot by an assassin in 1881,
he lay on his deathbed for 80 days
hallucinating while the government
carried on without him.
This make-it-up-as-you-go approach
obviously wouldn’t work
in the age of nuclear standoffs
and television news.
"Ask not what your country can do for you..."
Presidents needed to be visibly in charge.
And so, Congress was forced to act.
The final result was the 25th amendment.
Passed into law on 10 February 1967,
it has 4 sections.
The first was already convention:
if the president dies - or resigns -
the vice president
becomes the new president.
Section 2 deals with the replacement
of the vice president.
Fans of nerdy political dramas
know all about section 3
of the 25th amendment…
"which permits, through written declaration,
to temporarily transfer all powers
of the presidency
to the next in the constitutional
line of succession."
Section 3 was used
by President George W Bush
while he had a routine medical procedure.
"Because the president will be
under the effects of anaesthesia,
he once again has elected
to implement section 3
of the 25th amendment
to the United States constitution."
So for just over two hours,
the commander-in-chief
was the vice-president, Dick Cheney.
But the big one is section 4.
And it’s never been used before -
except in fictional shows like 24.
“What do you know about section 4
of the 25th amendment?”
“It provides that if the majority
of his cabinet feels he’s unfit
to fulfill his duties,
that the president could be
removed from office”.
That’s "removed from office" involuntarily.
We know from insider accounts,
the people around
President Ronald Reagan
were having these discussions
during his second term.
His staff noticed
that he seemed inattentive.
Sometimes he wouldn’t read his papers
and only wanted to watch television.
But they never took it any further.
Six years after leaving office...
"Former president Ronald Reagan
notified news agencies late today
that he has been diagnosed
as having Alzheimer’s disease."
So what does all this mean
for President Donald Trump?
Well, if there were ever any
serious doubts about the president’s sanity,
the decision to trigger the 25th amendment
would fall first on the vice-president,
then on a majority of the members
of Trump’s cabinet
and then it would require support
from two-thirds of both houses in congress.
A pretty high bar.
As unlikely as this seems ...
“25th amendment.
They would bring up the 25th amendment?”
“Yes, the 25th amendment is a concept
that is alive every day in the White House”
The White House, of course, has dismissed
all of this as “pure fantasy”.
But Michael Wolff isn’t
the only one raising this.
A group of lawmakers — mostly Democrats —
were recently briefed
on the president’s mental state
by a psychiatry professor from Yale.
The danger he poses is related
to past dangerousness
that he has shown.
In terms of verbal aggression,
boasting about sexual assaults,
his proneness to paranoid reactions,
his loose grip on reality."
But even if the vice-president
and Trump's cabinet were prepared to act
to trigger the 25th amendment.
Trump would still have a possible way out.
Presidents can remove any cabinet member
for any reason at all -
as Trump has already proven.
"Major breaking news this morning
from the Trump administration.
Just moments ago the president announced
that Rex Tillerson is out."
So while it might cause
a constitutional crisis,
if he feared his cabinet
were plotting to remove him,
He could take them out first
with his favourite catchphrase:
"You’re fired!"