Donald Trump has been accused of not being mentally fit for the highest office of the land by everyone from individual bloggers to professional psychologists trying to diagnose Trump from his tweets. But as far as the public knew, nothing was being done about it. However, now 25 House Democrats are backing a bill that would remove Trump from office based on the 25th amendment.
The 25th amendment basically gives protocol on what to do if the President dies, and the Vice President must take over. It was instated after JFK's assassination. However, a newer interpretation allows it to oust a President who is not mentally or physically fit to serve.
Freshman Rep Jamie Rasker from Maryland is leading the efforts to create this bill. If created, the bill would create a coalition of 11 bipartisan members of congress called "Oversight Commission on Presidential Capacity" that would evaluate if Trump was mentally and physically fit to serve.
Although this bill was introduced in April, it has gained more attention and congressional supporters in this last week because the president's tweets have become more and more erratic like when he tweeted a video of punching CNN.
Although this bill has gotten more support recently, there is something called "The Goldwater Rule" that could get in the way of the passing of this bill. The Goldwater Rule was created by the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 after Lyndon B Johnson won a sweeping victory against Barry Goldwater after Goldwater was given a public diagnosis by a psychiatrist who never met him that may have contributed to his losing the presidential election. The Goldwater Rule bans psychiatrists from making diagnoses of public figures without personally evaluating them.
This law is a subject of great debate among psychiatrists and psychologists today because of the current political climate and president. But breaking this rule in order to pass this bill and form this coalition would certainly cause controversy among those in the mental health field.
So the bill is slowly gaining support but it has quite a hurdle to jump before it could pass.
Either way, it will be interesting to see if this bill succeeds or fails.
