Pelosi Will Re-Unveil 'How to Remove a President Without an Election' Legislation Friday
By Brian Preston
PJMedia.com
AP Photo/Patrick
Semansky
Now we know what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s bizarre 25th Amendment comments were really about.
During her Thursday press conference, Pelosi told media to come on back Friday to hear something regarding the constitutional amendment by which a president may be removed from office. Passed in the wake of President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, the 25th spells out what may be lawfully done when a sitting president is deemed no longer fit to serve.
Section 4
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.
The 25th Amendment to our august Constitution was never intended to be a partisan cudgel. It was intended to bring order out of chaos for a nation reeling from some tragedy.
But welcome to 2020, where literally anything can happen, and it usually does! We’ve nearly had World War III, we have had space aliens a couple of times, and we’ve had a deadly virus sweep the world and we’re all supposed to stay mum about where it came from while we stay locked up and watch our economy crash and burn. Well, mainly in the locked-up Democrat states. Red states that have reopened seem to be bringing more jobs back.
We have other means besides the quite serious and scary mechanisms of the 25th for removing presidents. They’re called “elections,” and there happens to be one just around the corner. Why not wait a few weeks and see which side rolls box cars and which side rolls snake eyes?
That’s not good enough for Pelosi. We’re in the fierce urgency of now and she has told media that she and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) will re-introduce 25th Amendment legislation Friday morning. Raskin drafted this legislation in 2017, coincidentally Trump’s first year in the presidency, but it never went anywhere. It’s less likely to get anywhere now.
When asked Thursday if she believed it is time to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office, Pelosi declined to go into detail but questioned why the White House wasn’t providing a full accounting of Trump’s health, including when he last tested negative for COVID-19.
“I’m not talking about it today except to tell you, if you want to talk about that, we’ll see you tomorrow,” Pelosi said. “But you take me back to my point, Mr. President, when was the last time you had a negative test before you tested positive? Why is the White House not telling the country that important fact about how this made a hot spot of the White House?”
This gambit isn’t really intended to pass and become law. Everyone who ever watched Schoolhouse Rock knows how that works. It would have to get through both the House and the Senate and land the signature of one Donald J. Trump, the very target of Pelosi’s scheme. That’s not going to happen, nor does Pelosi even intend for it to happen.
It’s intended to create doubt that Trump is fit to serve, right now, less than a month before the election, because he contracted and then evidently Trumpinatored the Wuhan virus. It also may be a shiny little laser point for the malevolent media to chase around so they don’t notice Pelosi is the one standing in the way of the next round of stimulus cash. If those airline layoffs happen, it’s on Pelosi, but only if the media reports it accurately. We all know how that will go.
It’s a deeply cynical and somewhat deranged ploy now matter how you look at it. It’s impeachment by another name, at this point.
It may also suggest which way Pelosi believes the dice will land on Nov. 3 or in the days and weeks after. Are all those swing state gun buyers Biden voters?
As Allahpundit puts it over at our sister site Hot Air, it’s the swift unraveling of the republic we’re seeing here. Congress doesn’t meet to pass real budgets or laws all that much anymore. Presidents say things, congressional leaders say other things, Twitter gets stirred up with the blue checkmarks and ratios, there’s a lot of sound and fury and the odd executive order, and then the courts do most of the heavy lifting. That’s not how things are supposed to be, but it’s how they are and it’s why Democrats such as Pelosi are treating the perfectly ordinary nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court as if it’s Armageddon.
They’re even lying through their teeth about good ol’ Abe Lincoln in front of the entire nation to try and stop that one. That story Sen. Kamala Harris told during the vice presidential debate about Lincoln declining to nominate a new justice in 1864 because he was such a swell guy? She made the whole thing up! Kamala Harris lied about Honest Abe. Who does that?
In reality, Abe dangled the nomination in front of some folks he wanted to campaign for him while the Senate was out on recess. He then had his nomination started and confirmed in a single day once the Senate reconvened. Perhaps that’s what Trump and the Republican Senate should have done with Barrett, while citing the Lincoln Precedent. Hey, they are the “Party of Lincoln.” Do what Abe did.