Trump presented a plan for a second term in Wisconsin and asks to modify the 25th Amendment to be able to remove a vice president.
Former President Donald Trump outlined a nine-step plan for a potential second term, which includes eliminating the Department of Education and modifying the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, during a campaign rally held Saturday in Mosinee, Wisconsin.
Trump called for “modifying” the 25th Amendment to allow the removal of a vice president who “lies or engages in a conspiracy to cover up the president’s incapacity,” a politically unfeasible proposal and the latest escalation in his attacks on President Joe Biden and the shift in the Democratic ticket for the 2024 presidential election.
Trump is currently trailing Vice President Kamala Harris in the national polling averages conducted by FiveThirtyEight.
His frustration with Harris’ rise to the top of the list following Biden’s poor performance in the June debate has become a central theme of his campaign speeches.
Trump and Republicans have accused the Biden administration and Harris of covering up the president’s condition since he withdrew from the election race, an attack that the former president has incorporated into his nine-step plan.
“I will support modifying the 25th Amendment to make it clear that if a vice president lies or engages in a conspiracy to cover up the incapacity of the president of the United States, if they do so in a cover-up of the president of the United States, it is grounds for immediate impeachment and removal from office, because that is what they did,” Trump said.
The former president stated that he would pass reforms to prevent influence peddling, bribery, and corruption—key accusations in the Republican-led impeachment inquiry against President Biden in the House of Representatives, which has stalled for months due to a lack of evidence to support the claims.
Trump also renewed his pledge to dismantle the Department of Education, a long-standing target for Republicans since the Reagan administration, promising supporters that he would “stop the abuse of taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate American youth with all sorts of things they don’t want.”
The 25th Amendment outlines the presidential line of 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 the forced removal of a vice president. To ratify a constitutional amendment, it would require approval from three-quarters of U.S. states.
For an amendment to the Constitution to be modified and ratified, three-quarters of state legislatures would need to approve it. Trump was impeached twice by the House of Representatives during his four-year term but was never convicted in the Senate.
Trump’s call to modify the 25th Amendment also references previous discussions about removing him from office. After the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, some members of Trump’s cabinet considered invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from power.
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