Keith Olbermann: We Can Remove Donald Trump With The Constitution’s ‘Crazy Man Clause’

Keith Olbermann: We Can Remove Donald Trump With The Constitution’s ‘Crazy Man Clause’

Keith Olbermann, the unofficial leader of the resistance to President-elect Donald Trump, has urged voters to find non-violent, legal ways to resist the Trump administration. In his latest YouTube video for GQ Olbermann outlines how brave politicians can use the US Constitution to remove Trump.

Olbermann explained a little known section of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution. The amendment was passed in 1967 to formalize the presidential succession. Prompted by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and legal uncertainty surrounding the transfer executive powers, the amendment created the system of succession still in place today.

But the Twenty-Fifth Amendment also contains Section Four. This part of the amendment has never been enacted but it gives the nation’s leaders broad powers to take authority away from the president. Section Four allows the officers of the executive departments, in this case cabinet members, to declare the president unable to perform his duties. If the vice-president and enough cabinet members declare the president unfit, the vice-president becomes acting president with all executive powers.

“No hearings, no doctors, no conferences, no impeachments, just ‘Bye, Felicia!'” Olbermann explained. The president has the ability to regain his authority but if he does so, the issue could pass to Congress. If the House and the Senate vote by a two thirds majority to declare the president unfit, he would be deprived of his authority.

“So it’s a crazy man clause, right,” Olbermann said. “In the case of Trump, it assumes he behaves as president as he is behaving as president-elect, which is a good presumption because as president-elect he’s behaving as he did as a candidate.”

“A Republican vice-president and a Republican cabinet and a Republican Speaker of the House and a Republican President Pro Tempore of the Senate and a Republican House majority and a Republican Senate Majority can just do it,” Olbermann said. “Because! Because they don’t trust him, because they don’t like him, because it’s Thursday!”

Watch below.

 

Darragh Roche

Darragh Roche is Political Media Editor

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