CBS and only CBS is reporting that cabinet members are discussing invoking the 25th amendment to remove President Trump from office. I will believe it when I see it. But there have been a few hints over the last hours that the national security structure and some critical functions of government are operating separate from President Trump. The Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs conferred with Mike Pence and the Democratic and Republican congressional leaders about bringing in the National Guard. Apparently there were no discussions with the President and Mike Pence eventually gave the order, even though there’s no basis I can think of on which Pence could give such an order.
Later National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien tweeted that he’d spoken to Vice President Pence and supported him. That says a lot since the President had just denounced Pence. But who exactly is O’Brien reporting to? It’s all implicit. There’s nothing explicit to say he is somehow disengaged from the President. But I think it suggests it.
The last we heard from the President was his endorsement of the storming of the Capitol on Twitter before Twitter took the unprecedented step of deleting the tweet and locking the President’s account. He has very clearly declared war on the American republic. You can’t be the republic’s enemy and defender at once.
