Unhinged

 

It might have been a heat-of-the-moment comment or it might have been calculated. One never knows with politicians. But Pelosi was right to say that Trump is “…deranged, unhinged, dangerous…”

 

That's been clear for a while now.

 

That doesn't mean he isn't also a sociopath, a narcissist, a would-be Hitler, a con man, or the world's champion pathological liar. He can be all those things, and is. But Trump having parted ways with reality is the best argument for asking Pence to gather half the cabinet and invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment:

 

"Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President."

 

An unhinged president is "..unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office."

 

Any of Trump's public actions attempting to overthrow the election could be seen as evidence that he's a sociopath, narcissist, would-be Hitler, etc. But one phone call, with Georgia Secretary of State Raffensberger, that wasn't meant to be public, shows he is also detached from reality.  

 

Like the emperor of the fairy tale, parading around in his majestic new clothes, Trump paraded his imaginary missing votes before Georgia’s election officials:

 

- 200,000 or more  forged signatures;

- at least 50,000 Trump voters who showed up at polls, only to be told, they had already voted (presumably because evildoers had forged their signatures and voted in their names);

- 18,000 voters who gave vacant houses as addresses;

 

- another 18,000 fraudulent ballots for Biden in suitcases that mysteriously appeared after election workers and poll watchers were evacuated due to a water main break.

 

And there was more, he claimed.

 

The conspiracy against him included countless co-conspirators, he insisted, including, he hinted, election officials like Georgia Secretary of State Raffensberger.

 

Raffensberger tried to play the role of the brave little boy, telling Emperor Trump that all the above had been investigated. And all was fairy tale. But Trump's delusion, being more persistent than the naked emperor's, could not be shaken.   

 

If this were your Fox and Newsmax-obsessed elderly relative shouting at the holiday dinner table about suitcases full of fraudulent ballots, you'd exchange a look with the person next to you and change the subject to little Johnny's report card. You wouldn't  let your elderly relative drive Johnny to school on Monday, knowing there was a danger he'd get lost along the way.

 

And this is why Section 4 of the 25th Amendment exists: to remove someone  who has lost the ability to perform the duties of the president, but is incapable of recognizing his/her own loss of ability.

 

If Trump said what he believed in his call to Raffensberger, as a reading of the full transcript suggests he did, in a functioning government, Section 4 would have been invoked already.

 

​We haven't had a functioning government for a while now. The party that Trump leads is willing to keep a demented sociopath in power if it means that members of that party keep their power, too.

 

Think about that.​