MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said Monday that the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which allows for the removal of a president, “is de facto abolished” if it will not be used against President Donald Trump.
Scarborough was citing the part of the Constitution that allows for the removal of a president if he is unable to “discharge his duties” because of physical or psychological incapacitation.
“The president had just said a couple months earlier that [the coronavirus] was just one person coming in from China. It was going to be swept away, it was going to be 11 or 15 people. Then let me just say, the 25th Amendment is de facto abolished,” Scarborough said on the “Morning Joe” program. “I’m not saying that this is what Democrats should push for.”
Scarborough continued, suggesting the last two weeks have “completely made null and void the 25th Amendment” due to the president “behaving this way while a pandemic sweeps across our country and kills more people, actually, than died in the Vietnam War.” (RELATED: Vice President Mike Pence Slams Allegation He Would Use 25th Amendment Against Trump: ‘Appalling’)
Many critics have questioned the wisdom of Trump’s remarks at last Thursday’s coronavirus task force news conference, when he wondered aloud whether ingesting a disinfectant would help fight the COVID-19 virus. After a storm of criticism, Trump claimed he had made the remark to be “sarcastic.”
Scarborough described Trump’s comment as another in a series of “quack notions” that “actually can kill Americans” and his behavior as “extraordinarily irrational, in the middle of a pandemic that is changing history, that is destroying our economy day by day, that’s killing people, especially seniors, day by day.” (RELATED: Senior MSNBC Reporter Suggests Tanning Bed May Have Contributed To Trump’s ‘Irrational Rants’)
U.S. President Donald Trump arrives for the daily briefing of the coronavirus task force at the White House on Apr. 23, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The morning host said the 25th Amendment is merely a legal fiction.
“If it were ever going to be used, it’d be used now. It is not going to be used … So why don’t we just stop pretending that we have a 25th Amendment?” said Scarborough. “Because… really, for all practical purposes, we don’t.”