Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) penned a letter Monday evening that he sent to the entire Cabinet as well as Vice President Kamala Harris demanding they invoke the 25th Amendment after a compromised Joe Biden abandoned his reelection efforts.
He asked the obvious question that so many have been wondering since Biden’s withdrawal: If he isn’t capable of being a candidate, how can he be capable of being the commander-in-chief?
🚨Today I’m demanding the Biden Harris cabinet invoke the 25th Amendment.
If Biden isn’t capable of being a candidate, he’s not capable of being President.
My letter to VP Harris and the Biden Harris cabinet members. pic.twitter.com/woqh3JDAdJ
— Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) July 22, 2024
In an interview, Schmitt explained his position and said that the matter is actually simple: the president is incapable of carrying out his duties.
“Joe Biden has decided he isn’t capable of being a candidate; in so doing his admission also means he cannot serve as President,” Schmitt told Fox News Digital. “Therefore, it is in the best immediate interest of the safety of the United States for Joe Biden to resign from office or face removal under the 25th Amendment.”
Schmitt said that under the Biden-Harris Administration, Americans have “fought to stay afloat financially, have seen America’s standing on the world stage diminished, and have been pushed aside in favor of illegal aliens flooding across our southern border.”
“If Joe Biden is incapable of running for office, he is incapable of serving in office,” Schmitt told Fox News Digital. “It is that simple.”
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Although many members of Congress have bandied about the idea of invoking the 25th on Biden, he is the first to officially do so.
The amendment was designed to maintain order when a president dies, is killed, is incapacitated, or is removed.
The 25th Amendment, proposed by Congress and ratified by the states in the aftermath of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, provides the procedures for replacing the president or vice president in the event of death, removal, resignation, or incapacitation. The Watergate scandal of the 1970s saw the application of these procedures, first when Gerald Ford replaced Spiro Agnew as vice president, then when he replaced Richard Nixon as president, and then when Nelson Rockefeller filled the resulting vacancy to become the vice president.
That doesn’t mean putting Old Joe out to pasture would be easy, however. You’d have to get a whole lot of people to agree, chief among them Vice President and current presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
Section 4 is the most controversial part of the 25th Amendment: It allows the Vice President and either the Cabinet, or a body approved “by law” formed by Congress, to jointly agree that “the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” This clause was designed to deal with a situation where an incapacitated President couldn’t tell Congress that the Vice President needed to act as President.
It also allows the President to protest such a decision, and for two-thirds of Congress to decide in the end if the President is unable to serve due to a condition perceived by the Vice President, and either the Cabinet or a body approved by Congress. So the Cabinet, on its own, can’t block a President from using his or her powers if the President objects in writing. Congress would settle that dispute and the Vice President is the key actor in the process.
One thing we can say for sure, Biden’s decision has thrown the Democrat world into turmoil, and there are a lot of complex issues for them to sort out. Schmitt is right, though—either the president is compromised or he’s not, and since he appears to have acknowledged that he is by dropping out, how can he continue leading our country?
It will be interesting to see how many other lawmakers follow suit or if this is just a one-off.
