The 25th Amendment Will Never Be Invoked Against Trump

Ross Douthat makes the case in The New York Times that the 25th Amendment ought to be deployed to remove President Trump from office:

This will not get better. It could easily get worse. And as hard and controversial as a 25th Amendment remedy would be, there are ways in which Trump’s removal today should be less painful for conservatives than abandoning him in the campaign would have been — since Hillary Clinton will not be retroactively elected if Trump is removed, nor will Neil Gorsuch be unseated. Any cost to Republicans will be counted in internal divisions and future primary challenges, not in immediate policy defeats.

Meanwhile, from the perspective of the Republican leadership’s duty to their country, and indeed to the world that our imperium bestrides, leaving a man this witless and unmastered in an office with these powers and responsibilities is an act of gross negligence, which no objective on the near-term political horizon seems remotely significant enough to justify.

There will be time to return again to world-weariness and cynicism as this agony drags on. Right now, though, I will be boring in my sincerity: I respectfully ask Mike Pence and Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell to reconsider their support for a man who never should have had his party’s nomination, never should have been elevated to this office, never should have been endorsed and propped up and defended by people who understood his unfitness all along.

Now is a day for redemption. Now is an acceptable time.

I entirely agree that it isn't going to get better. But I don't think that will be enough to move Pence, Ryan and McConnell much less the majority of his cabinet to act. The Republicans control the White House, Congress and have kept a majority on the Supreme Court. Removing Trump in this manner would surely put an end to that. Trump's supporters would cry betrayal and Democrats would reap the benefits. If Trump goes down then Pence, Ryan and McConnell are going down with him. They aren't putting party ahead of country, they are putting power ahead of country. There might be a better chance of this coming to pass with a Democrat controlled Congress but I doubt the Trump White House would aid and abet them. Impeachment would be their preferred option.

Douthat writes, "A child cannot be president. I love my children; they cannot have the nuclear codes." But where are the adults to tell Trump they are going to take the nuclear codes away from him?