Establishment conservatives Bill Kristol and Ross Douthat have respectively gone public with their scheming to remove President Donald Trump from office.
Douthat wrote a New York Times column published Tuesday night that called for Trump to be removed from office via the 25th Amendment to the Constitution
Kristol wrote on Twitter Tuesday that his and his allies goal is to “dispose of Trump” and “Trumpism” but that it will take time, “Several of you have asked, What IS path forward? Well, we’re working on it. Disposing of Trump & overcoming Trumpism can’t be done in a day.”
Kristol was writing about the path forward for Republicans in wake of latest onslaught against Trump, “GOP members & donors are in grip of quiet desperation. Task of anti-Trump Republicans isn’t to say I told you so, but chart path forward.”
GOP members & donors are in grip of quiet desperation. Task of anti-Trump Republicans isn't to say I told you so, but chart path forward.
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) May 16, 2017
Several of you have asked, What IS path forward? Well, we're working on it. Disposing of Trump & overcoming Trumpism can't be done in a day.
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) May 16, 2017
Douthat teased the genesis of his column with comments on Twitter about Trump and fired FBI DIrector James Comey, “I think the combination of saying this to Comey and then *firing* Comey makes a stronger 25th Amendment case than impeachment case…It suggests a man who literally cannot think through the howlingly obvious consequences of his actions.”
I think the combination of saying this to Comey and then *firing* Comey makes a stronger 25th Amendment case than impeachment case.
— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) May 16, 2017
It suggests a man who literally cannot think through the howlingly obvious consequences of his actions.
— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) May 16, 2017
Excerpt from Douthat’s column in which he argues Trump has a ‘child’s mind’ and cannot be held legally accountable for his actions:
…There is, as my colleague David Brooks wrote Tuesday, a basic childishness to the man who now occupies the presidency. That is the simplest way of understanding what has come tumbling into light in the last few days: The presidency now has kinglike qualities, and we have a child upon the throne.
It is a child who blurts out classified information in order to impress distinguished visitors. It is a child who asks the head of the F.B.I. why the rules cannot be suspended for his friend and ally. It is a child who does not understand the obvious consequences of his more vindictive actions — like firing the very same man whom you had asked to potentially obstruct justice on your say-so.
A child cannot be president. I love my children; they cannot have the nuclear codes.
But a child also cannot really commit “high crimes and misdemeanors” in any usual meaning of the term. There will be more talk of impeachment now, more talk of a special prosecutor for the Russia business; well and good. But ultimately I do not believe that our president sufficiently understands the nature of the office that he holds, the nature of the legal constraints that are supposed to bind him, perhaps even the nature of normal human interactions, to be guilty of obstruction of justice in the Nixonian or even Clintonian sense of the phrase. I do not believe he is really capable of the behind-the-scenes conspiring that the darker Russia theories envision. And it is hard to betray an oath of office whose obligations you evince no sign of really understanding or respecting.
Which is not an argument for allowing him to occupy that office. It is an argument, instead, for using a constitutional mechanism more appropriate to this strange situation than impeachment: the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which allows for the removal of the president if the vice president and a majority of the cabinet informs the Congress that he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” and (should the president contest his own removal) a two-thirds vote by Congress confirms the cabinet’s judgment…
The Establishment sharks smell blood in the water and are moving in to try take Trump out.
