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President Joe Biden's debate performance has put in motion a wave of concern about his fitness for office. Since then, he has dealt with a relentless stream of critics within the Democratic Party with questions about whether he should remain as the party's nominee as well as some who believe he should resign from office.
Throughout the course of his term, polls have shown that voters have had concerns about his age and mental acuity. Those concerns have mushroomed putting his mental cognition squarely in the public's eye. Centrist Democratic senators, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and even actor George Clooney have joined the chorus of those suggesting the party may need to move on from the president.
It has gotten so bad for Biden that talk of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from power has taken place and Republicans in Congress have publicly floated the idea that Biden be removed by using it. In particular, Section 4 of the amendment provides a means for the vice president and a majority of the cabinet to declare that a president is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office" and permit the vice president to immediately assume the powers of the president. The amendment provides a process for the president to dispute the action and for Congress to weigh in as the final arbiter on the matter. Invoking Section 4 would be unprecedented and present yet another constitutional crisis for Americans.
Notably, there is no evidence that Vice President Kamala Harris or anyone in Joe Biden's cabinet have discussed using the 25th Amendment to remove Biden from power. And yet it is his opponent, former President Donald Trump, who actually had high-ranking officials in his administration consider using the amendment on him—not once, but twice! This seems like a pretty important data point for those considering the current state of the presidential race. This is especially true given how easily Trump secured his own party's nomination.
Former Senator Birch Bayh (D-Ind.), one of the framers of the 25th Amendment, said he thought it would be reserved for those who were "as nutty as a fruitcake." It is incredibly telling that those closest to Trump considered using such a controversial tool to remove him from power. Trump was coronated as the Republican nominee, with little-to-no discussion within his party of the constitutional crisis he plunged the country into after the 2020 election.
Following the events surrounding Jan. 6, 2021, several members of Trump's cabinet initiated conversations about removing him through the 25th Amendment.
At least four members of Trump's cabinet considered trying to use the 25th Amendment to remove him from power in the midst of the insurrection–Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, and Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chow (wife of the Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell).
Ultimately, the group determined that the time horizon required for the implementation of Section 4 would be too long. Also, Vice President Mike Pence did not support the idea. Both Devos and Chow resigned their cabinet positions the day after the insurrection.
This was not a hypothetical. This is not from so-called Republicans-in-name-only (RINOs) or Democrats, but from Trump's handpicked cabinet officials. Last summer, just four of 40 former Trump cabinet officials were willing to go on record in supporting his nomination for 2024. Again, these are individuals who served closely with Trump and have been lifelong Republicans.
Jan. 6 was not the only time discussions of Trump's removal through the 25th Amendment occurred among high-ranking Republicans. In 2017, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein suggested secretly taping Trump after his firing of FBI Director James Comey due to concerns over Trump's fitness for office. Comey's replacement, Andrew McCabe, confirmed that discussions of using the 25th Amendment did occur among officials at the Justice Department, but it is unclear whether those discussions occurred among Trump's cabinet officials at that time.
That so many high-ranking Republicans (including members of Trump's own cabinet) considered invoking the 25th Amendment in an attempt to remove him from office should be a major tell to the American people about Trump's fitness to serve another term. Since the events of Jan. 6, Trump's rhetoric has not subsided, but has only gotten more intense.
So, while there is the hypothetical discussion of using the 25th to remove President Joe Biden from office, there was actual real discussion of using it to oust Donald Trump. Of course, Trump was impeached twice and received a significant number of Republican votes in the Senate that would have removed him from office in 2021. He has since been charged with nearly 100 felonies and was convicted on nearly 3 dozen last month.
Do Democrats and Joe Biden have questions to answer regarding his fitness for the position? Yes. Do Republicans have questions to answer for going "all in" with Trump given that his cabinet considered removing him from power, Republican senators voted to convict him of impeachment articles and remove him from power, and that his vice presidential pick, Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), called him America's "next Hitler?"? Absolutely.
Robert Alexander is a professor of political science at Bowling Green State University. He is the author of Representation and the Electoral College, published by Oxford University Press.
David B. Cohen, Ph.D., is professor of political science and director of the Applied Politics Program at The University of Akron. You can follow him on X at @POTUSProf.
The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
