Type “the 25th amendment” into a search engine and the results throw up a lot of stories about Donald Trump. This hitherto fairly obscure codicil to the work of America’s founding fathers was among the hot topics of conversation among leading Republicans at the Munich Security Conference. Perhaps, the chatter had it, it provides the route to unseat the president. Such is the surreal nature of the conversation within the Washington political establishment about Mr Trump’s steadily more surreal presidency.
First the amendment. Passed 50 years ago and intended to address ambiguities in the body of the constitution, the amending clause offers an alternative to impeachment as a way to change the commander-in-chief. Specifically it says: “Whenever the vice-president and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the president pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the vice-president shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as acting president.”
Put simply, the vice-president and the cabinet could mount a coup against a sitting president seen as unfit to carry out his or her duties. The intent of the amendment was to deal with a situation when the president was incapacitated by, say, ill health. But the wording looks sufficiently open to allow a broad interpretation of such incapacity. That anyway is what was being said by members of Mr Trump’s own party in the bars of Munich.