Congressional Republican Openly Calls For Removing Trump With 25th Amendment

Introversion

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https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/trump-25th-amendment_n_5ff72fa9c5b6ef6b15844934

Huffpost said:
Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois became the first Republican member of Congress to openly call for President Donald Trump’s removal using the 25th Amendment, saying it was necessary to “end this nightmare” following Wednesday’s deadly insurrection on Capitol Hill.

Vice President Mike Pence should begin initiating the removal process, Kinzinger said in a video statement Thursday, “to ensure the next few weeks are safe for the American people, and that we have a sane captain on the ship.”

“Sadly, yesterday it became evident that not only did the president abdicate his duty to protect the American people and the People’s House, he invoked and inflamed passions that only gave fuel to the insurrection that we saw,” Kinzinger said. “When pressed to move and denounce the violence he barely did so, while of course victimizing himself and seeming to give a wink and a nod to those doing it. All are indications are that the president has become unmoored, not just from his duty, but from reality itself.”

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Kaiser-Kun

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Leaving aside ideas of payback, punishing Trump *should* be a priority of the new administration. Fascists should never get to fade quietly into the night when their time is over. Trump should leave with a huge boot on his ass.
 

Lyv

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Pence is an enabling, complicit coward.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York called on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment, which allows him and the Cabinet to wrest the power of the presidency from Trump.

She said she hoped to have an answer from Pence within the day on whether he would attempt to use the 25th Amendment. The two leaders tried to call Pence directly Thursday but were left on a holding line for 20 minutes without Pence picking up.

And classless.

Speaker Pelosi has called for impeachment if the 25th is not invoked.
 

cbenoi1

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Pence is an enabling, complicit coward.

Oh the irony. Pence was in the Senate along with a handful of minions who were staging a shit show to try salvage Trump's presidency when the mob tried to storm in.

The Art Of Making Friends(tm).

-cb
 

Diana Hignutt

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Pence is not going to go through with it. He's too big a coward.
 

Bufty

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If he goes ahead his place in history is assured as the guy who finally kicked Trump out. But that's his Republican career probably gone.

And if he does nothing I suspect his political credence is over.

It seems to be lose/lose now, buddy.

His own fault. Clung to the coattails too long and left it too late.
 

lizmonster

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Any of them that don't get behind *rump's removal are complicit in anything that happens next. Shrugging aside a coup is not acceptable.
 

Lyv

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Lisa Murkowski has become the first Senate Republican to call for Trump to step down. She said he's done enough damage.

"He doesn't want to stay there. He only wants to stay there for the title. He only wants to stay there for his ego. He needs to get out. He needs to do the good thing, but I don't think he's capable of doing a good thing," Murkowski said.
 

Roxxsmom

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This article raises an interesting question. Is there a way to disable a sitting POTUS's ability to nuke another country without the need for additional approval when our system was set up in the cold war to make it possible for the POTUS to get the missiles flying ASAP if the other side launches a full-on first strike?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has asked the Pentagon's leadership to limit President Trump's ability to use nuclear weapons during his final days in office.

In a letter to her Democratic House colleagues on Friday, Pelosi said that she had spoken with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, about "available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike."

"The situation of this unhinged President," Pelosi wrote, "could not be more dangerous and we must do everything that we can to protect the American people from his unbalanced assault on our country and our democracy."

Separately, several senators and members of Congress have written to Milley and acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller to put checks on the president's authority to launch nuclear weapons.
https://www.npr.org/sections/congre...s-nuclear-authority-heres-how-that-system-wor

The whole nuclear football approach might be something to rethink once this mess is over, since we live in a different world now, one where there may be a greater risk of first strikes on the US that are isolated or a result of terrorism. Even when our POTUS isn't bat S**t insane.

"The President has sole launch authority, and he does not have to check that with anyone," says Elaine Scarry, a professor at Harvard University and author of Thermonuclear Monarchy, a book about launch authority.

In the past, putting the power to end civilization in the hands of a single person has been seen as the least bad option. Presidential launch authority began at the end of World War II when the military nuked Nagasaki without President Harry Truman's direct consent. At the start of the Cold War, launch authority was delegated to some field commanders, but that was eventually seen as too risky.
 
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Introversion

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Heh heh. https://theintercept.com/2021/01/07/trump-administration-resignations/

The Intercept said:
FOR THE PAST four years, I have held a job with the Trump administration in which I constantly stabbed people. In total, I stabbed 97 individuals, in the face, chest, groin, and nose.

Today I stand up and say: No more. I hereby resign my position as deputy assistant undersecretary for stabbing.

The reason for my decision is simple.

I come from a family that believes in public service. Our Founding Fathers knew that it was necessary and, in fact, vital for the U.S. government to stab people. The only argument is how much. For myself, I am proud of each and every one of my 97 stabs. And I was correct to appear on Fox News dozens of times, where I repeatedly shrieked, “Let’s start stabbing!” I also used my TikTok account to promote the sales of Trump 2020 T-shirts with a picture of a bloody knife and the words “stab stab stab stab stab stab.”

Unfortunately, Wednesday’s mass stabbing by supporters of Donald Trump indicates that there is now a little too much stabbing in our society — from all sides. It is time for sensible moderates like myself to rein in the understandable passions of our fellow Republicans.

I realize this may frustrate my compatriots. We know the left will stab us all given the chance, as when Adlai Stevenson gestured toward Joseph McCarthy with a ballpoint pen in 1951. But we are the side of the aisle that has always opposed excessive stabbing. We must rise above, even if our actions are not reciprocated. Only then can all Americans live together in harmony — stabbers and stabbees alike.

It is in this spirit that I congratulate my fellow patriots who have also recently resigned from the administration. There is Elaine Chao, secretary of transportation; Mick Mulvaney, former White House chief of staff and, more recently, special envoy to Northern Ireland; Matt Pottinger, deputy national security adviser; Tyler Goodspeed, acting chair of the Council of Economic Advisers; and quite a few other people who you also have never heard of.

We realize some will call us the moral heroes of our age. Are we? That is not for us to say. All we can do is speculate about whether we are, in the WhatsApp group chat we just started.

...