Conway's stupidity is reflected in the extended subhed for the story:
Conway, the former GOPer turned Trump critic who’s running for Congress as a Democrat, lays out his case that Republicans will eventually have no choice but to remove the president before his term ends.
Sure they'll have choices, George. That starts with the remaining portion of the part continuing to cower in fear, or however you phrase it.
Let's do simple math.
For the next Congress, after the midterms, to remove President Donald J. Trump from office by the one means that is a Congressional prerogative — impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by the Senate — would require one-sixth (approximately) of Republicans in the Senate to vote aye for conviction. (Impeachment itself needs a simple majority.) Trump could launch a tactical nuke at Iran and that wouldn't happen.
Rethuglicans talking anonymously to Politico is not the same as Rethuglicans casting a record vote, and thinking that, even if they've done good head-counting on paper, an ultimate vote like this is actual nut-cutting, not more academic head-counting.
Also, re the Anon Y. Mice talking to Politico, with summer vacations coming soon and other items, getting the creaky wheels of Congress to go through and complete the whole process before the November election day? Not happening. (That said, the Politico piece, linked by the TNR, is general bitching; not one of the Mice, let alone a named Trump flunky, mentions actually getting rid of him.)
Conway then raises Option B:
And you see it also in a lot of the Republican influencers—the Megyn Kellys, the Joe Rogans, and the Tucker Carlsons of the world. They’re basically talking about the 25th Amendment now.
Well, as someone who swatted that down, repeatedly, during Trump's first term, let's look at the actual amendment (Wiki link) again.
The first two sections are about the Veep explicitly becoming president, then the process to get a new Veep, so not relevant here. The third is about a president declaring himself temporarily constrained; it's been invoked more than once during serious presidential medical procedures.
So, to the "nut graf" of Section 4? In reality, it's more convoluted than most people think, and to the degree Congress might have to become involved, has higher hurdles than impeachment and trial.
Let's dig in:
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.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department [sic][note 2][7] or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days 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. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.
OK, several things.
One, on the political side, unless Trump clearly has a memory-loss dementia, does Bagger Vance have the balls to initiate this process. You know better than that, and Conway should know better; if he doesn't, he has less business being in Congress than Eric Swallowell. (sic)
Basically, in anything short of a clear memory-loss type dementia, or a clear brain injury similar in level to JFK's but with a president still living, the 25th Amendment essentially requires a coup d'etat against the president by the vice president, per the first paragraph.
Per the first half of the second paragraph, it requires them to hold their own feet to the fire against an enraged president.
And should that play out, beyond the impeachment process, there's the higher hurdle of how a veep and fellow plotters must convince two thirds of BOTH houses of Congress they're right.
And, that process plays out over 21 days, plenty of time for plenty of machinations.
Behind all this, and deliberately left vague in the framing of the amendment, what constitutes being "unable to discharge the powers and duties of [the] office," or "inability"?
Back to Conway:
They have a guy who—they’ve overlooked his mental disorders in the past, dismissed them. They’ve overlooked his lies, they’ve overlooked his depravity. They’ve overlooked the fact that he is basically an adjudicated sexual abuser, that he’s a convicted criminal. They overlook these things because it served their purposes. It no longer serves their purposes.
None of those are "inability." You, and some Anon Y. Mice in the GOP, and plenty of Blue MAGA, might not like HOW Trump is "discharging," but that's not the same as "inability."
Left unaddressed is what if a president fights his way back into power, but then looks worse? There's nothing to stop a veep, with Cabinet backing, to go down this road again. And, there's nothing to stop a president from fighting it again.
I'll quote more Conway, the next paragraph after the previous quote, which ties to that, and other political issues:
And in terms of what happens in the U.S. Senate—which we can get back to, and why that matters, of course—the Senate is full of cowards. The Republican senators are cowards and they’ve been afraid of Trump.
Yeah, one-sixth of the Senate (plus one-sixth of the House, which Conway doesn't mention and which shows his ignorance of the actual 25th Amendment) ain't doing that.
I modify that. Later in the piece, Conway indicates his knowledge:
We need to, basically, I think we need to possibly even put criminal sanctions in place for people who refuse to spend the money in accordance with Congress’s will. And there’s also—I talked about this even before I launched the campaign—we need to create that advisory body to act as the judge of whether the president is fit to continue in office, and replace the cabinet.
Yeah. The Washington solution — Congress punting responsibility to a committee, in hopes the problem goes away or resolves itself in 21 days. At the same time, there's more ignorance. Such a body ONLY gets a bite at the apple of the president, not the cabinet, and only comes into play when the veep gets a majority of the cabinet to tell Congress the president isn't fit, if that's what Conway meant. If it just means replacing the cabinet as who makes the call? It still requires the veep to start the process.
Note that "AND" word at the start of Section 4 carefully. Section 4 of the 25th Amendment is inoperable without the participation of the sitting vice president.
And, if you think Bagger Vance has the balls for that? You're really a fucking idiot.
Finally, as for Conway and other Never Trumpers, whether still Republican or now ex-Republican? No sympathy. Trump was a serial liar, a racist, a thug with Mafia ties and a publicly admitted sexual predator before he was elected the first time.
==
The 25th Amendment is limited in another way, directly connected to the JFK assassination that inspired it, and that itself could inspire some evil genius to do particular acts. Say that, in Dallas 1963, Oswald's first shots are pretty much as they happened, but the third shot is, say, 1 cm higher. Jack Kennedy survives but is pretty much brain dead. Say that Oswald gets off a fourth shot, or even fourth and fifth, and then takes out LBJ in his car, and he's stone cold dead.
There IS NO Veep to start the 25th Amendment process, and a brain-dead president is unable to nominate one.
In short, while the 25th Amendment is better than nothing, it's not that good.
It also, for people who worship at either the originalist or liberal originalist, King James Version or New King James Version, of the Constitution of the United States, shows the structural failure of the strong-presidential system of government, at least in the US. (France has an impeachment process similar to the US, but a Google says nothing like a 25th Amendment. That said, like the 25th, it involves a two-thirds vote of BOTH Assembly and Senate, and per Le Monde, is at least as convoluted as the 25th.)
In the UK? If similar were happening? Tories would be looking for a no-confidence vote and trying to round up sufficient Labor, Lib Dems and others in the Commons for a simple majority vote.
