Former CIA director John Brennan has said the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which enables the removal of a president deemed unfit to serve, was explicitly written with the likes of Donald Trump “in mind.”
Trump has faced bipartisan calls for his removal from office following his widely-condemned threat that a “whole civilization would die” in Iran if they did not agree a deal with the U.S.
Speaking to Ali Velshi on MS NOW, Brennan agreed that the U.S. intelligence analysis available prior to the war about how Iran might respond to an attack, which was presented to Trump, had proven broadly correct. It was only the president’s own “narcissism and megalomania” had prevented him taking it into account, he said.
After lashing out at Trump’s “ignorance,” incompetence” and “compulsive lying,” Brennan said: “I think the 25th Amendment was written with Donald Trumps in mind, because allowing someone like this to continue to be the commander-in-chief and to control the tremendous capabilities of the U.S. military, including our nuclear weapons capability, which he seemed to allude to when he said he’s going to just eliminate an entire civilization… Again, we really are in very, very troubling times.”
Brennan – who led the CIA during Barack Obama’s second term, having previously served as secretary of Homeland Security – is a long-time enemy of Trump and was referred to the Department of Justice by the president’s allies in Congress in October over the “Russiagate” scandal.
Nevertheless, he is far from the only person to raise the possibility of the 25th Amendment being invoked to remove Trump, with congressional Democrats, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and even Candace Owens and Alex Jones openly calling for his ousting this month amid widespread disquiet about his recent conduct.
“How do we 25th Amendment his ass?” Jones asked on his InfoWars show last Monday, responding, like others, to Trump’s increasingly wild rhetoric towards Iran over the ongoing war and its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, which has caused global oil prices to spike.
The president took to Truth Social on Easter Sunday to issue an expletive-laden broadside against Tehran in which he demanded: “Open the F***in’ Strait, you crazy b******s, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
The message shocked and offended many conservatives, particularly devout Christian members of his base, especially given the timing, only for the president to top it days later by warning that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back” if Iran failed to reopen the strait and abandon its aspirations towards developing a nuclear weapon.
When an 11th hour ceasefire agreement was forged thanks to mediation from Pakistan late Tuesday, averting the threatened U.S. assault on Iran’s civilian infrastructure, Trump’s mood swung back towards jubilation, prompting him to proclaim “a new Golden Age of the Middle East.”
But, since then, he has responded to peace talks led by Vice President JD Vance in Islamabad proving fruitless by threatening a U.S. Navy-led “blockade” of the strait, a step Tehran has said “amounts to piracy.”
The sixth week of the war began Monday with Trump embroiled in a fresh spat with Pope Leo XIV and posting a meme on his social media platform in which he is depicted as Jesus Christ healing the sick, following on from a similar blasphemy controversy last May when he posted a similar image to suggest he should have been chosen as the successor to Pope Francis.
Even before the recent alarming turn his messaging has taken, a majority of Americans were telling pollsters they were confused about the rationale behind the commencement of Operation Epic Fury and said they did not support the war, particularly if it meant the U.S. military putting boots on the ground, given Trump’s promise to end “forever war” engagements during his candidacy.
Many also said their primary concern remained addressing the cost of living crisis and bringing down inflation, which the war has only exacerbated.
Removing Trump would require Vance and a majority of the 16-member cabinet to jointly agree that “the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” an outcome that appears to be extremely unlikely given that Trump has intentionally packed his administration with hard-line loyalists.
Another long-shot possibility would be the formation of a disability review panel to determine his mental fitness to continue, which would require approval by Congress and the president’s signature, or, if vetoed, the support of at least two-thirds of the House of Representatives and Senate.
Starmer demands Trump ends his blockade of the Strait of Hormuz
Trump slams Pope Leo as ‘weak’ and posts picture of himself as Jesus healing the sick
‘Not even Hitler attacked the Pope so directly’: Trump condemned for Leo post
Pope Leo responds after Trump savages him and poses as Jesus Christ: ‘No fear’
