Former President Donald Trump on Saturday called for “modifying” the 25th Amendment to allow for the removal of a vice president who “lies or engages in a conspiracy to cover up the incapacity of the president,” a political nonstarter and the latest escalation of his attacks on President Joe Biden and the change atop the Democratic ticket.
“If you do that with a cover-up of the president of the United States, it’s grounds for impeachment immediately and removal from office, beause that’s what they did,” Trump said during a campaign rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin.
In the wake of Biden’s poor June debate performance and his decision to end his presidential campaign a month later, Trump and his Republican allies have accused Vice President Kamala Harris and top Democrats of covering up a decline in the president’s mental fitness.
The Harris campaign declined to comment on Trump’s remarks on Saturday.
The vice president has continued to defend Biden and his mental capacity, telling CNN last month that she doesn’t regret insisting in the weeks after the debate that Biden was fit to serve another four-year term.
“Not at all,” Harris told CNN’s Dana Bash in her first major TV interview since becoming the new Democratic nominee. “He has the intelligence, the commitment and the judgment and disposition that I think the American people rightly deserve in their president.”
Trump’s proposal comes as he continues to grapple with the changed dynamics of the 2024 race. In the midst of his struggles to land on a consistent message to blunt Harris’ momentum, Trump has continued to criticize Biden. During his Saturday rally, the former president said it was a “miracle” the president won the 2020 Democratic primary and mocked Biden’s performance at this March’s State of the Union and their June debate.
“We’re run by stupid people — stupid, stupid people,” Trump said Saturday. “And we found that out at the debate with Joe. How did that work out?”
The 25th Amendment lays out presidential succession and the process for removing a president, which would require the support of the vice president and a majority of the president’s Cabinet. It does not address forcibly removing a vice president. Ratifying a constitutional amendment requires the support of three-fourths of US states.
Impeachment, a separate process that wouldn’t require amending the Constitution, requires a simple majority vote in the House to adopt articles of impeachment and then a two-thirds vote in the Senate to convict. Trump was twice impeached by the House during his first term, but was not removed from office by the Senate.
Trump’s call to alter the 25th Amendment invokes past calls to remove him from office. Some members of the former president’s Cabinet discussed using the 25th Amendment to remove him after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
