Like most of America, it’s hard for me to turn my eyes away from the disastrous Donald Trump presidency. On May 19 I noted that every day of his presidency was worse and more unbelievable than the day before. Here it is June 7, and it’s still if not more the case. Tomorrow the excessively sober former FBI Director James Comey gets his turn to openly add to the huge pile of evidence that Trump obstructed justice. Comey’s initial statement is already online. My wife plans to pop some popcorn and watch it live.
Trump is everywhere and most lately has been infecting my dreams. As a classic narcissist, Trump is probably happy about this. The details of the dream are a little sketchy, but somehow I’m in a room with Donald Trump. Like Trump with Angela Merkel (who in his trip the other week told Trump eleven times he can’t negotiate a trade pact with Germany, but only the European Union) I find myself keep saying the same stuff to him and it just does not register.
How does this end? On May 29, I said it wasn’t going to end well, and that’s truer now than ever. I am more convinced than ever that he won’t see out his term, but I am less convinced that he will resign hastily and testily. While that has been his pattern, Trump seems to be going into full bunker mode. Nothing is more precious than his insatiable ego and his conviction that he can never do wrong. You can see it in fine display with his weird tweet the other night where typoed a new word: covfefe. Any other human being would follow it up with a tweet that, oops, he mistyped. Trump misspells all the time, but simply can’t admit this baffling typo so he tried to make a joke out of it. He can’t admit that he has any human frailties. Darn it, he meant to use covfefe and it’s your problem if you don’t understand it.
Trump has already passed Nixon’s “smoking gun” test. This was the evidence that ended in his resignation. Trump has admitted that he fired Comey in part because of “this Russian thing”, which clearly meant Comey investigating potential links between the Russians and his campaign. By all reasonable and lawyerly standards, Trump has obstructed justice, which independent special counsel Robert Mueller will doubtless charge Trump with in time. Trump wanted Comey to drop any investigations into his short-lived National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. He pressed others in positions of power to do the same thing.
Why did he do it? Here’s the scary part. Nixon did it because he was mendacious. Nixon knew better but assumed it would remain a little Oval Office secret. But Nixon went to law school. Trump’s education consists of a bachelor’s degree from Wharton. One hopes he had a civics class or two in school, but obviously not much of it took hold. Trump asked these inappropriate and illegal questions mostly because he didn’t know he shouldn’t. Of course this is the way you do things, was probably what amounted to his rationalization. I’m the president. I am in charge. What I say goes. The idea that the president is accountable to the law and the constitution seems to never entered his brain, even though he swore to do both when he took the oath of office. He doesn’t get this. Frankly, he doesn’t understand the job he signed up for.
Trump was qualified to be president only in the sense that he was native born, age 35 or older and got a majority of votes in the Electoral College. He is clearly not mentally qualified to hold the office though because he has shown no competence in faithfully serving the office.
Which is why I now think his most likely exit will be via the 25th amendment. Republicans will find it convenient not to impeach him as long as it is in their political interest not to do so. Considering that so many of their constituents voted for him there’s plenty of incentive to overlook his dangerous eccentricities via impeachment and conviction. Republicans are tribal in nature. More than ninety percent of them will vote for any Republican on the ticket, no matter how bad or unqualified they happen to be, which proved true in the last election despite Trump’s known problems and temperament. Nixon found out that things do change very quickly. If consensus develops that Republicans in Congress realize they (and their jobs) are better off with him gone, the will should be there. My brother is betting October 15, 2017 is that date. We’ll see.
Me, I’m now betting on the 25th amendment solution. The amendment, adopted in 1967 and amended in 1992 basically says the president can be temporarily removed from office if the vice president and at least half of the cabinet agree that he is unable to discharge his duties. There is plenty of evidence to this already. For example, he’s more than four months into his administration and his government is about 5% staffed. To my way of thinking you are certainly unable to discharge the duties of the presidency if you just don’t understand what they are. If you aren’t aware that your job is to enforce the law as it exists, you cannot faithfully discharge the duties of the presidency. If you aren’t smart enough to know that you can’t ask the FBI director to compromise his required independence from Executive Branch coercion, you can’t discharge your duties. These of course are but a few examples that show that Trump is unable to discharge the powers and duties of the presidency.
It’s also the way Republicans can get rid of his toxic presidency with the least political damage. Which is why I believe that there are already all sorts of backdoor conversations going on amongst Trump’s cabinet and Vice President Mike Pence on whether, but more likely how and when to take this unprecedented step. Trump can of course declare that no inability exists. Congress gets 21 days to decide if Trump is incapable of discharging the duties of presidency adequately. A vote of at least two thirds of both the House and the Senate would remove him from office and we’d have President Pence.
Mental health experts could certainly be called to testify. It would not be hard to make a case that Trump’s excessive narcissism is a mental illness, one probably that cannot be cured, and the illness affects his ability to discharge the duties of the presidency. They could even call Trump to testify in his own defense. Just ask him a few fundamental questions about the duties of the president. There is plenty of evidence already that makes an airtight case. Republicans could use this as the cover they need because it’s irrefutable.
For the sake of the nation we can only hope this happens sooner rather than later.
Occam's Razor 
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